Use a message broker and Web services to rethink your approach to application and systems integration As we pass through new periods of information technology, we carry forward application artifacts from previous periods with us. Depending on the age of the company and the nature of its growth, this accumulation can be sizeable. Added to this IT storehouse are the large enterprise systems and the best-of-breed satellites that surround them. Within this maze of systems, often separated by generation and architecture, is the significant need to bring important information and transactions together. At Textron, a $13 billion manufacturing company and conglomerate, one of the more important pillars of our IT foundation architecture is integration. I believe that the focus has already shifted from looking at the IT landscape as an accumulation of applications and systems with special connection needs to looking at it as an integration universe that is populated with applications. Moreover, because most large IT organizations are now committed to a “buy vs. build” philosophy, it is time for CTOs to look at their technical staffs and ask, “Shouldn’t we invest in training a good portion of them to be excellent integration experts and to follow that important career path?” Establishing individual connections among applications results in a maze of connection points that is hard to manage, and it presents an inelegant diagram of the application integration environment. In a large company with product and geographic diversity, the connections can add up to hundreds, if not more, producing “technical spaghetti.” We at Textron are straightening out this tangle by using a message broker and Web services. Most enterprise application vendors offer direct connections (called adapters) with other important enterprise systems and provide toolkits to build other links. The most important adapter for us, however, is the one to our message broker. In our case we are using IBM’s MQ Series suite. The use of a message broker allows us to more easily decouple replaced applications and connect them with new ones without disturbing the other side of the broker. When there are many older and/or homegrown applications in need of replacement at some time in the future, this is especially useful. Many vendors package middleware products of their own choosing with their products. Although this may be quite helpful for companies that do not have a middleware strategy, it tends to be less attractive for those that do. Imagine the nightmare of middleware for middleware itself and the chaos in the very space meant to add clarity and control. At Textron, we are building “Centers of Expertise” for various foundational entities within software infrastructure. The intent is to accelerate the adoption of important best practices within the enterprise. We also look at patterns within the connections where reusable components powered by metadata can be used and the numbers of connectors can be decreased. The integration space of the future may be even more important than it is today. In today’s world, large enterprise systems — even when scaled down — demand considerable resources of time, financial investment, people, and training. There is a possibility that the applications of the future will evolve into more discrete processes or functional components. In that event, independent and intelligent integration engines of future design could be the gravity that holds the application universe together. Software Development