From Patchwork to Business Solutions

Not so long ago, rumors were circulating about the demise of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, as many companies made the mistake of risking everything on bestof-breed solutions. In fact, ERP systems and their manufacturers weathered the storm remarkably well. Installing a variety of different solutions is very timeconsuming,and the benefits enjoyed by user companies are limited. Of course, this means that the popularity of suppliers of enterprise application integration (EAI) has increased.Initial integration using the EAI tools was relatively easy to cope with, but integration became more problematic with each version upgrade of the individual components. Essentially, the IT departments have been sitting on a time bomb; one that in times of tight IT budget restrictions won’t be easily defused.I see the necessity of EAI in some cases, but I have always held with the theory that a company needs a strong backbone to provide support and ensure that business processes run smoothly. This is because the users’ view of IT is colored by the applications they work with, and IT departments are automatically blamed for any shortcomings in availability, data exchange, and consistency. As a result, IT is positioned low in terms of credibility and dependency (according to a Meta Group model that illustrates perception of IT dependency versus IT capability).