A New Framework for Evaluating the Functional Capabilities of Intra-Enterprise Application Integration Technologies

Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) technologies facilitate the sharing of information and business processes of interrelated information systems in order to achieve the target integrated systems. Different EAI solutions and technologies provide various capabilities which lead to the complexity of their evaluation process. To reduce this complexity, appropriate tools for evaluating the functional capabilities of EAI technologies are required. This paper proposes a new framework for evaluating the functional capabilities of EAI technologies, which simplify the process of evaluating the functional capabilities of intra-enterprise integration technologies and solutions. The proposed framework for evaluating the EAI technologies was enhanced using the structural and conceptual aspects of previous frameworks. It offers a new schema for which various EAI technologies are categorized in different classes and are evaluated based on their supporting level for functional integration capabilities’ criteria. The new framework offers two lists containing integration technologies and their associated classifications, and functional capabilities of integration technologies. The proposed framework is a novel one which can be used by information system experts for evaluation and comparison purposes of various integration technologies.