Integrating cross-enterprise systems: an innovative framework for the introduction of enterprise application integration

Integration is a significant parameter that influences the success of ebusiness applications and supports organisations to achieve competitive advantage. Traditional approaches to interorganisational integration such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) have proved insufficient and complex. Recently, Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) has emerged to address enterprise and cross enterprise integration in a more flexible and maintainable way. Application integration supports organisations to unify their applications and business processes by incorporating functionality from disparate applications. The introduction of EAI requires companies invest considerable sums of money on their IT infrastructure. Thus, there is an increasing need to support organisational decision-making for application integration adoption. However, normative literature is limited regarding EAI adoption and therefore there is a need for further research and contribution in this area. In addressing this relative in literature need, this paper, proposes a model for the adoption of application integration. The model suggests that various factors such as benefits, barriers, costs, external pressures and others influence the adoption of EAI. The proposed model is tested through a case study and it can be used by organisations when considering the adoption of EAI. It can also be used by researchers to better analyse and explain the adoption of application integration.