Digital Transformation Through Integeration

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Digital Transformation Through Integration Introd
uction The business world is undergoing a
revolution. With the proliferation of technology
across our lives and work, industries around the
world are realising that the tried and trusted
methods that have kept them moving forward might
no longer suffice. Consumers today are
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connected, informed, and unprecedentedly
technologically savvy, and as a result, the
companies they deal with are expected to be the
same. Digital transformation the process by
which organizations modernize themselves to
incorporate new digital technologies throughout
their entire business is becoming necessary to
survive. It has become a part of todays business
processes and operations. Beyond this, digital
transformation leads to major changes on how a
business operates and delivers value to its
customers, as technology achievements integrate
into current processes. Digitalizing
processes Business processes may consist of sub
processes and tasks that run through several
functions, which in turn may be managed through
distinct applications. Entities, such as
customers or vendors, may have different
application repositories to store parts of their
master information. Processes often require user
intervention such as approvals, validations,
rejections etc. to proceed and may handle
business rules and become intelligent, with
machine learning techniques. Integration
platforms supporting such processes should be
based on an architecture that provides the
corresponding end-to-end capabilities and
fulfills necessary design principles for digital
transformation to be feasible. It should also
provide the framework for incorporating
workflows/human interaction modules easily, as
well as monitor, evaluate, and easy readjust
modules, necessary for adopting intelligent
modules and exploiting the benefits of process
automation. Enterprise Integration Delivering
value to customers
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• Performance, scalability and high availability
  integration projects are large projects
  involving several partners, applications and
  technologies, and they often demand handling
  complicated challenges. Enterprise-Service
  Service-Bus-based platforms can face these
  challenges more efficiently and provide the
  necessary features, such as
• Connectivity industry standards support
• Code abstraction and high-level development
  environment
• Transaction processing, with guarantee message
  delivery
• Security
• Drill-down monitor and reporting
• Contrary to on-premises integration
  installations, if best practices have been
  followed, cloud installations require less
  initial costs, exploit better flexible resource
  management capabilities, and they address the
  needs of mid or small-scale businesses as well.
• Modern clients want instant service and support
  from the brands they deal with. They want brands
  that make themselves available to the client in
  a way that suits the client, not in a way that
  suits the organization. And they want this
  experience to be offered seamlessly across every
  channel. In order for an organization to meet
  these needs and wants of the consumer, it is
  absolutely necessary for companies to be
  innovative and to stay abreast of digital updates
  and changes. With this in mind, decision makers
  in businesses are emphasizing the need for
  digital transformation within their
  organizations.
• The rise of SMAC technologies (social, mobile,
  analytics, and cloud) are driving the change in
  customer expectations and business
• innovations.

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Unrestricted connectivity between consumers and
organizations is due to social media and
communication advances. Mobile connectivity is
linking consumers and employees with powerful
computing power available anywhere and at any
time. Raw data can be processed by analytics
engines that turn this data into actionable
conclusions. The cloud is removing data storage
limitations, and making powerful customer
service, analytics, and organizational tools
available to businesses of all sizes. However,
while SMAC technologies my be driving the change
in digital transformation, implementing these
technologies without the right strategy for
enterprise integration in place may make the task
impossible. At the core of a successful digital
transformation is ensuring all of your
applications and databases talk to each other
through a common set of standards. This is
realised through integration using a middleware
hub, such as an Enterprise Service Bus, or ESB
for short. ESB Architecture definition and
role ESB is defined as a software architecture
that provides structured integrations between a
common platform (i.e. service bus) and consumer
endpoints. While everyone needs and recognizes
the value of Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) while
integrating heterogeneous systems and
applications, there is still no industry standard
definition for ESB. ESB technologies and
architecture are a cornerstone in Enterprise
Integration digital transformation, compared to
traditional point to point integration or any
other alternatives. That means that, in a digital
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• transformation project, someone must be aware of
  the ESB pros and cons, know the capabilities and
  limits of such architecture, and be able to
  choose one of the offered solutions.
• Where does Enterprise Integration come into the
  digital transformation landscape?
• The evolution of these technologies and systems
  has caused new function-specific applications
  that support business processes and operations
  to be created. These often lead to distributed
  processes and information that belong to the
  same entities but struggle to communicate
  effectively.
• Consider the simplified case of an O2C (order to
  cash) process
• It starts with taking the order,
• followed by processing,
• dispatch and delivery,
• and finally to order payment.
• This also may involve functions such as
  procurement (e.g. for dispatch), sales and
  marketing (for promoting or pricing), and
  financial services (for credit control or
  payment means).
• All these functions may be managed by different
  applications such as ERP, CRM, SRM or dispatch.
  The order information is spread across all of
  these different systems. Enterprise Integration

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transformation orchestrates the end-to-end
process regardless of the applications that are
involved and how they process data, provides
consolidated information, and finally provides
better analytics and visibility. Reach the
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