Heterogeneous systems

Every IT department of any reasonable size that I have seen has used systems from at least two separate vendors. In this heterogeneous world, there are a number of challenges that I consistently see customers facing:

• Incompatible data formats:

  • X12 850, EDIFACT ORDRSP, IDOC 850 are all used to represent purchase orders, but they look very different and represent content in different ways

• Incompatible system metadata:

  • SAP Repository, Siebel, SQL schema, developer's diagrams

  • Metadata is scattered around systems with no consistent story for discovery and representation

• Incompatible wire formats:

  • Transport and application specific protocols: HTTP, SFTP, HTTPS, MSMQ, IBM MQSeries, SAP—IDoc, RFC, BAPI, and SAP DB

• Incompatible message exchange protocols:

  • SWIFT versus FIX, X12 versus EDIFACT, EDIINT, RNIF, BTF 2.0

  • All have different reliability protocols that need to be supported

• Weak process visibility:

  • How do I see what is going on?