Integration in the enterprise – understanding the landscape

The digital enterprise landscape is continuously becoming more sophisticated. Gone are the days when the enterprise used to have less than 10 systems covering most of its business processes. Today's enterprises have hundreds, if not thousands, of different applications that are either bought, built in house, or a combination of both. This is in addition to a set of legacy systems that are still surviving the axe. Nowadays, it is very common to find that an enterprise has dozens of websites, multiple instances of ERP systems, and many other departmental applications, in addition to several data warehouses or lakes.

One of the reasons why enterprises end in such situations is because of the complexity associated with building business applications. Building a single application that runs all business processes is nearly impossible. Maintaining it and adapting to day-to-day business challenges and requested changes...