SERVICE-ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE AND INFORMATION PORTAL AS SOLUTIONS FOR ENTERPRISE INTEGRATION APPLICATIONS

Abstract

Integration is addressed to management and organizational issues, related to departmental and enterprise efficiency, and is defined as the state of collaboration that exists among departments that are required to achieve unity of efforts through the company by using the best technologies and solutions. Most of the solutions for aligning technology and business requirements have been mainly technology-oriented and application focused. Recently, enterprise application integration (EAI) appeared as the solution to the business and information and communication technology (ICT) alignment problem, without offering expected business flexibility. The concept of service-oriented architecture (SOA) offers a framework for better integrated systems that meet business needs, and more business flexibility than EAI. The best way to do this is to create a comprehensive, dynamic gateway for the content and services of the company, that is more than a web site, so-called portal or enterprise information portal (EIP), that provide an easy way to offer products and services for customers and partners. The paper presents the concepts of SOA, EIP, and EAI, as solutions for the management of modern enterprises.