EAI as a Service - Combining the Power of Executable EAI Patterns and SaaS

Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) problems are one of the major challenges IT departments are facing today. As enterprises merge, split up, or grow, existing legacy systems from different vendors implemented in different programming languages and running in different environments as well as roll-your-own applications have to be integrated. Furthermore, companies are starting to shift more and more on-premise software to software run in aSoftware as a Service (SaaS) business model. Outsourcing software to external and internal SaaS providers introduces new integration challenges, namely those of the integration of standard SaaS software with on-premise systems or other systems run at different SaaS providers which is a problem not addressed by SaaS platforms today. Recurring integration problems can be described by means of Enterprise Application Integration patterns. Those are used as nuggets of advice to solve complex integration problems. In this paper, we introduce executable EAI patterns offered in a SaaS business model to allow companies to focus on the integration without the need for the setup of complex integration infrastructures. Users will be guided by workflows customizing configurable EAI patterns to easily create integration solutions. We therefore propose EAI as a Service as a flexible, customizable, inexpensive way to tackle EAI problems both of on-premise systems but also of systems run in a SaaS business model.