EXTOL Technology Blog

I have recently been involved on a project to integrate a legacy application to an SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) application. This project has proven to be quite interesting, challenging, and at times, frustrating. Several key issues arose on this project that apply to nearly all application integration projects. Over the next several weeks, I will explore several of the issues I encountered.

Many legacy systems have custom coded interfaces to newer systems, especially Web-based applications. These custom interfaces may be poorly designed and documented. In addition, there may be significant issues with stability and error handling/recovery. A thorough understanding of the custom coded interface implementation, as well as the negative impact on critical business processes, is vital to delivering a successful solution.

Listening and learning from IT staff, as well as the end user community, will uncover issues they have to “live with” and/or deficiencies that result in manual processes. It is amazing what people will share when you take a sincere interest in their daily struggles. Business users become frustrated with systems they use everyday that don’t work properly; if they can identify the problem, why can’t IT fix it?

Next time, I’ll delve into other preparation tasks that will increase your chances of delivering an application integration solution that everyone loves!

For my inaugural post on this blog, I want to revisit one of those “solved problems” that still dogs many of the companies we talk with, namely, how to handle B2B integration requirements that don’t involve standard EDI. Companies still find it difficult to cope with the full range of B2B connections and content types needed to integrate with large and small trading partners, including:

• Standard EDI (and in some cases, EDI that does not fully conform to standards)
• “Standard” XML, which ranges from well-developed, horizontal standards like RosettaNet to hundreds of loosely-defined vertical transaction sets
• EDI-like flat file standards (most of these are older, vertically-focused cases)
• EDI-based web forms
• Proprietary, partner-defined flat files
• Proprietary, partner-defined spreadsheets
• Proprietary, partner-defined web portals
• Proprietary, partner-defined documents sent by email or fax

Did I miss any? Probably. But the point is that standard EDI is just one of numerous conventions used for B2B integration.  Of course, standard X12 and EDIFACT EDI are still the mainstay of B2B integration. And there is little evidence to suggest that companies are ready to invest in replacing all of their EDI connections with something “better”.  In fact, EDI adoption is increasing.

Read more…