Enterprise Integration Challenges
In the midst of an incredibly challenging economic climate, ‘change’
has been a hot topic around the world. Enterprises worldwide have been
undergoing changes because of internal challenges and external challenges because
of mergers and acquisitions (M&A). The application landscape is getting
really complex where in several applications are redundant, isolated and not
fully leveraged in the enterprise.
Enterprise Integration (EI) is the need of the hour as it
plays a very critical role in bringing People, Process and Technology together
to deliver an efficient enterprise with business agility and IT flexibility. Enterprise
architecture frameworks such as TOGAF also play a major role in providing tools
and methods to effect a smooth and seamless integration at an enterprise level.
Adding to the complexity of IT application landscape is the ever
increasing popularity of ‘cloud’ applications. While enterprises move some of
the functions such as CRM to cloud, rest of the applications are very much still
in the premise behind the firewall. This presents us a very interesting problem
– data synchronization between cloud and on-premise applications. There are several
ways of addressing the problem from building Point-to-Point (P2P) connections
between applications to centralized Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) based
integrations.
While P2P seems a good solution for small scale integrations,
it brings forth with few critical issues – create resources ‘critical’, scatter
mediation capabilities such as data connectivity, transformation, enrichment etc.
and needless to say, maintaining the hardwired code.
Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) based Enterprise Service
Bus solves the scattered message processing logic by centralizing them and
leveraging them for present and future integrations. They are secular in
providing connectivity to all possible applications. However, the challenges are
steep learning curve, heavy upfront capital expenditure and slow time to
market.
It is evident from past several customer engagements that the
customers are not really looking for highflying, hyped technologies, or expensive
tools but they are really looking for simplified integrations, faster time to
market, more productivity, small learning curve and very importantly lower capital
expenditure.
Complex problems do not need a complex solution. They
actually need a simple solution with great innovation. Here is my attempt to introduce
you to one such solution – Boomi and provide you a very quick overview of Boomi
and how it could help enterprise customers in achieving quick integrations.
Boomi – A cloud integration platform
Boomi is a latest acquisition from Dell in the cloud space. Dell
Boomi is an on-demand, cloud integration platform that connects your on-premise
applications with cloud applications such as Salesforce.com, Sugar CRM and so
forth. What is really fascinating is that its graphical user interface (with
drag & drop feature) enables any integration designer with no or little
knowledge of programming languages to create integration processes to move data
from one application to another in a real quick time.
Boomi Core components
Process
Integration process is the heart of Boomi integrations. The
deliverable of any integration in Boomi’s context is the integration process. The
process is like a mini workflow that is woven visually by connecting several
connectors, data maps and routing logics. It connects to different applications
and moves the data from source applications to destination applications. In
between applications, you can have if loops, business rules, data
transformation, exception handling etc. Depending on your preference, you could
follow either top down approach – start with creating process and then other
required components or bottom up approach – start with creating required components
first followed by creating the integration process.
Interface
Once the integration process is created, it can be accessed
in following ways: -
API – Certain applications might want to get the data in
real time. In order to fulfill this, Boomi allows you to expose integration
process as a Web Services. Using Web Service Server connector, you will be able
to turn your integration process into a Web Service. Only the deployed process
will be available as Web Services. Once the Web Service is exposed, it is ready
for consumption. All that you will need is a SOAP client to create and send SOAP
request to Boomi web service. For beginners, please consider using SoapUI tool
to test the Web Services. It does not force you to write single line of code. The
description of the Web Service (WSDL) can be accessed through this link http://<boomi_atom_host>:8080/ws/soap?wsdl.
Scheduler – you can also schedule the integration process to
run at regular intervals. In order to schedule a process, it should have been
already deployed. There are several options for scheduling a process –
scheduling from once a day to once a minute. You can also schedule only on
particular days(s) on a week. Please see official documentation for more
information.
Mediation
In a secular enterprise application landscape, applications
implements different technology and use different data formats. Boomi
understands this and supports co-existing of applications by providing diverse
connectivity and data transformation features.
Connector – Boomi has a rich set of connectors that support nearly
all popular applications. Boomi connectors are classified as standard
connectors and application connectors. Standard connectors provide connectivity
to standard data sources in the enterprise such as AS2, Database, Disk, FTP,
HTTP, JMS, LDAP, Mail, SFTP and Web Services. The list is not limited and is still
growing. As you would understand, these connectors will allow you to connect to
data sources within the firewall and web applications outside the firewall as
well. Boomi also supports several popular applications such as Salesforce, SAP,
NetSuite and so forth. For complete list, please see the official documentation.
Data Profile & Data Map – Data profile is used to
capture the structure of the message that comes into or goes out of Boomi
integration process. As of now, profiles can be created for different types of
data – XML, Database, EDI, Flat file. Once profiles are created, you would be
allowed to do a field mapping that aids in data transformation and enrichment.
Boomi supports all types of transformation for example, XML to XML or XML to
Database, Flat file to XML and so forth.
Field mapping is a nice UI that helps you visually design the mapping
between fields present in the source and the destination profiles. It also
supports applying certain functions such as string, mathematical etc. in the
field mapping. For example, string function ‘toUppercase’ can be applied to a
field so that the destination profile gets all the characters in uppercase.
Data maps and profiles are very important constructs that you will use in almost
all integrations involving applications like Salesforce.com.
Data Process is useful feature for data manipulation. It
allows you to manipulate the data inside the process. If the incoming document
is a flat file document, you can use data process to split the entire document
into multiple documents – one document per row. This is not all. It provides
several useful functions such as zipping/unzipping, PGP encryption, Base 64
encoding and so on.
Route supports a much needed ‘content based routing’. This
feature can route the incoming request messages to different destination
applications based on certain content in the incoming message. My colleague’s favorite
example for content based routing is Forex rate conversion. If the Forex rate conversion
involves a small amount, the request may be forwarded to a ‘cached’ Forex rate
service. If the amount is large, then the request may alternatively be sent to
a ‘real time’ Forex rate service that gives most accurate Forex rate. This
helps in avoiding any potential Forex loss due to volatility.
Boomi also supports business rules. It allows you to execute
one or more business rules and depending on the outcome of execution, the
request can follow either of the two paths – true or false. The rule creation
is supported by very intuitive user interface. The feature also allows creating
a custom error message that can be accessed in nodes in the down for error
reporting purpose.
Exception step provides you the control to stop the process
flow execution. It also allows creating custom error messages that will be
captured in the process reporting. These messages can be used for further
troubleshooting. The customer error message can be a static message and/or
dynamic message.
Do you have too many messages to be processed and worried
about the execution time? Boomi has a solution for that as well. Flow control
step will allow you to execute the incoming documents in multiple threads.
However this feature has been disabled in Test mode.
That’s all? No, it has so many other useful features as
well. Please refer to official documentation.
Platform
AtomSphere - an on-demand integration platform available
as a service. It allows companies to build, deploy and manage integration
processes directly from the web. It does not matter whether you are in need of
integration applications which are on the cloud or on-premise. It enables both
- Cloud to cloud integration
- Cloud to on-premise integration
It offers easy to create and manage integrations,
subscription based services. Its nice user interface will help you in moving
away from code based integrations to configuration based integrations. Getting
started with using Boomi AtomSphere is really simple. Just get access to it by
opening a trial online account now at https://ondemand.boomi.com/application/registration.php
Boomi Atom - a runtime component that runs all integration
processes. It is small but very powerful and self-contained; once your
integration process is deployed onto the atom, it has all required components
to execute the integration processes.
Depending on your organization’s integration requirement,
your atom can be installed into the cloud or on-premise.
- Atom in the cloud – this is ‘pure’ cloud approach. All your applications are in the cloud and so is the atom. Atom will be installed in the Dell Boomi data center. Hence, your organization will have zero footprint of software as everything is on the cloud
- Atom in on premise – this is very much required when part or all of your applications are behind the firewall. For example, database. In this case, atom is also required to be installed behind the firewall so that atom can connect freely to inside applications using respective protocols and connect to outside applications over internet. Your organization firewall should allow connecting to applications which are located in the internet
Molecule - a single tenant, clustered atom that runs
integration processes in parallel. It provides both load balance and fail over
features. Atoms that are installed in different machines can be grouped to
create a molecule. The molecule configurations are very useful for handling
high volume of transactions and improve overall performance. However this
feature is available only in the high end Boomi edition.
Non-functional features
Security - For any cloud application, one would always wonder about the
data security. Boomi does not store any customer data and it simply transfers
data from source applications to destination applications. Also, it uses secure
protocols such as SFTP, HTTPS to transport data between applications.
For cloud atom that runs in the Boomi data center, it is
very secure and it adheres to partner security requirements. The data center is
also deemed SAS 70 Type II compliant.
For local atom that runs in on-premise, the data is on the
customer server, the atom is behind the firewall and the organization data
center will ensure the security.
The above ensures that data is secured both in the server and
in the transit.
Monitoring & Managment - For any complex system, monitoring and management are key
issues. One would want to gain visibility into an integration process –
execution status, error message etc. Boomi AtomSphere provides a console
through which process can be monitored.
Atom Management console will allow to monitor the status of
the atom, configuration, web server settings, and heap memory, stop/resume the
scheduling of deployed integration processes. It also allows you to subscribe
to RSS feeds for getting the atom status and process errors. For real time
message processing, atom has a built in web server that listens on default port
number 8080. You can modify the port number here if it clashes with other
application servers’ port number.
Process reporting helps you in obtaining information on the
running or already finished running integration processes. It provides filters
to search for details of one process or all processes from one or more atoms.
You can also apply time filter such as ’Past Hour’, ‘Past 24 Hours’ etc., to
limit the number of search results.
Boomi features
Boom is really an innovative offering from Dell and it has
all necessary features to support cloud and on promise integrations. To name
few very important features of Boomi,
- Simplified integrations using visual designer and drag & drop features
- Self-service portal, with minimal IT involvement
- Subscription based cloud solution to integrate on-premise applications quickly with other cloud applications
- No hardware or software to install or maintain and no need to maintain patches and upgrades
- Ready to use connectors available for almost all popular applications
- Supports both on-premise and cloud applications integration
- Supports routing, field mapping and Transformation of messages
- Highly scalable and secure
Boomi Benefits
- Less Learning Curve
- Reduced integration life cycle
- Quick time to market
- Convert CAPEX into OPEX
Want to know more about Boomi?
This article is just an attempt
to give you a quick overview of Boomi’s architecture, feature and benefits. Boomi
is really a great platform and it is much more than what is described over here.
I know you will really be tempted to read more to understand and try the
benefits of Boomi in your enterprise. There is a 30 day free trial license
available at https://ondemand.boomi.com/application/registration.php.
To help you get going, there is a ‘help‘ documentation available at http://help.boomi.com and support any
questions there is a forum as well at http://www.boomi.com/forums/.
What more you can ask for, get started today.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed
in this article are entirely of the author's and do not necessarily represent
the views of the company that he works for. This article has been written from
a user perspective and from author’s personal experience and you are advised to
read official documentation for more accurate information.
