Illustration by Istvan Orosz Enterprise Integration with ERP and EAI

Abstract

The highly competitive nature of the current business environment creates tremendous pressure for global company operations. To survive—and thrive—in these hypercom-petitive markets, it is essential for a company to understand rapidly changing business circumstances. Global organizations strive for agility and flexibility in order to cope with rapid changes in both internal and external environments [8]. To rapidly respond to a changing environment, an enterprise must integrate business functions into a single system efficiently utilizing information technology, and share data with third-party vendors and customers. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) has historically focused on integration of internal business functions. Research has begun to focus on linking an organization's ERP system to the ERP systems of suppliers and buyers. The implementation of ERP also requires a substantial amount of time and financial commitment [6]. As an alternative, or supplemental technology, Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) automates the integration process with less effort than that required with ERP. To some degree, EAI can even incorporate ERP, thus serving to connect ERP systems. Here, we look at ERP and EAI and investigate their values for today's organizations. Two different approaches are presented and compared: internalization, represented by ERP; and externalization, through the use of EAI. Comparing internal and external approaches to enterprise business integration.