by Integration and orchestration middleware enables the integration of applications and data across heterogenous systems and platforms in a seamless manner. It provides common services and standard interfaces that facilitate the communication, mediation, and synchronization between disparate and distributed applications.
Types of Integration Middleware
There are different types of Integration & Orchestration Middleware based on their functionality:
Message Oriented Middleware (MOM): MOM facilitates the communication between applications through asynchronous messaging. Popular MOM technologies include JMS, RabbitMQ, etc. MOM brokers accept, store, and forward messages to applications.
Enterprise Application Integration (EAI): EAI middleware addresses the point-to-point integration needs between applications. It provides adapters and connectors to integrate applications developed on different platforms. Some common EAI platforms are Tibco, Informatica, etc.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB): ESB serves as a backbone for intra and inter-enterprise application integration. It routes messages between applications, enables data transformation, handles transactions, security, and management. Popular ESB includes Mulesoft, IBM WebSphere, Oracle Service Bus etc.
Data Integration Middleware: Focused on extracting, transforming and loading data across heterogeneous data sources. Key functionalities include CDC, Metadata management, data quality, master data management etc. Examples include Oracle GoldenGate, IBM InfoSphere, Informatica etc.
API Management: Provides API development, publication and governance capabilities. Enables creation of standardized APIs that integrated applications and data sources can leverage. Popular API management solutions are Google Apigee, IBM API Connect, Microsoft Azure API Management etc.
Stream Integration: Supports Integration & Orchestration Middleware of streaming data sources like IoT sensors, social media feeds, server logs etc in real-time or near real-time. Examples are Apache Kafka, Pulsar, AWS Kinesis, Azure Event Hubs etc.
Benefits of Integration Middleware
Some key benefits of using integration and orchestration middleware include:
– Independent application development: Applications can be developed independent of each other’s internal logic or technologies used.
– Reusability of assets and services: Common integration services can be reused across applications to reduce development and maintenance costs.
– Platform agnostic integration: Middleware provides abstraction from underlying technologies, protocols and data formats used by integrations endpoints.
– Simplified integration: Middleware provides standard interfaces and tools that simplify the integration development process.
– Scalability: Middleware solutions are designed to handle large volume of transactions in an elastic manner.
– Manageability: Middleware platforms provide robust management, monitoring and governance capabilities for integrations.
– Reliability: Features like reliable messaging, transactions management, security etc ensure reliable execution of integrations.
– Extensibility: Open standards based approach allows integration with a variety of internal or third party solutions.
Orchestration Using Middleware
Orchestration refers to the automation of defined business processes and workflows by coordinating different services and tasks. Key aspects of process orchestration using middleware include:
– Process Definition: Process flows are defined using graphical tools or languages like BPEL, BPML etc.
– Process Engine: The middleware provides a process engine that interprets process definitions and coordinates task execution.
– Human Tasks: Certain steps may need human intervention which is handled via email/portal tasks.
– Event Handling: Events drive the process execution based on preset rules and conditions.
– Parallel Execution: Multiple parallel paths or branches can exist within a process flow.
– Error Handling: Exception and error conditions are catered for with compensation logic.
– Monitoring and Tracking: Robust dashboard provides process visibility, metrics and audit.
– Dynamic Orchestration: Processes can dynamically invoke services, make branching decisions based on runtime.
Popular orchestration middleware includes IBM WebSphere, TIBCO, Oracle BPM, Pega, etc. They are increasingly being leveraged to automate inter-departmental workflows across BFSI, Healthcare and Government domains.
Integration Strategies
Given the diversity of platforms and scale of heterogeneous systems, integration demands using appropriate strategies:
– Federated data model: Data is structured into subject areas with common reference data to facilitate cross-application queries.
– Point-to-point integration: Individual application pairs are integrated separately using adapters. Not scalable for large number of systems.
– Enterprise hub-and-spoke: Central enterprise service bus acts as integration backbone with standardized interfaces to handle distributed transactions at scale.
– Event-driven integration: Real-time events trigger asynchronous processing across distributed event producers and consumers connected via a broker.
– API-led integration: Granular, standards-based APIs expose core capabilities as reusable services for consumption by internal and partner systems.
Integration and orchestration middleware acts as the backbone for building connected enterprise applications by providing common services, standards and managing interoperability between diverse systems in a centralized, secure and scalable manner. As heterogeneous digital ecosystems expand rapidly, the role of middleware continues to gain strategic importance for enterprises.
*Note:
1. Source: Coherent Market Insights, Public sources, Desk research
2. We have leveraged AI tools to mine information and compile it
