News
Aberdeen says information integration growing
- By John K. Waters
- August 5, 2003
The market for Enterprise Information Integration (EII) technology, the
infrastructure that aggregates data and coordinates transaction across back-end
data sources in an enterprise, seems to be taking off. A recent report from
market watchers at the Aberdeen Group (''Enterprise Information Integration --
The New Way to Leverage E-information,'' Second Edition) pegs that market's
growth rate at 80% and claims that it is ''on the brink of strong growth and
implementation by a wide variety of Fortune 1000 companies.''
Aberdeen credits the entrance into the EII market by such major vendors as
IBM for this growth. Big Blue's Information Integrator is a key component of
IBM's on-demand strategy, and it has thrust EII products in general into the
spotlight, according to Aberdeen. But EII may simply be the right solution at
the right time. EII products make all back-end information in a company appear
as though it came from a single source and offers the promise of big
improvements to the real-time characteristics of business intelligence (BI),
while easing mergers and speeding development of enterprise portals and
e-business integration applications.
EII should not be confused with EAI (Enterprise Application Integration),
cautions the report's author, Wayne T. Kernochan. EAI solutions integrate
applications internally within an organization; EII, which Kernochan calls ''one
of the best Swiss army knife-type multiple-use tools ever to come along,'' deals
with information.
Kernochan admits that there is some confusion between the two technologies,
which is understandable in a market that is all but drowning in acronyms, but he
believes that IT shops are beginning to sort out the differences between these
complementary technologies. The advent of larger suppliers into this market --
companies such as Business Objects and BEA, which are beginning to acquire EII
capabilities from the smaller suppliers -- seems to support this opinion.
According to Aberdeen, the rapid growth in the EII market will be paralleled
by an increasingly key role for EII in such areas as business process
integration and so-called legacy modernization.
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About the Author
John K. Waters is a freelance writer based in Silicon Valley. He can be reached
at [email protected].