In this world of continual change your enterprise must be more agile than ever with business units quickly and efficiently working together to create and exploit new business opportunities. Agility demands integrating and interoperating with external stakeholders - customers, prospects, partners, suppliers, regulators, investors, the press, even the general public.

In the past many IT organizations looked inwards, trying to get the most out of their technical investments. The focus is now clearly on looking outwards, on meeting the needs of stakeholders.

This outward looking focus leads to an ever-increasing number of business requirements and projects that have to be delivered – quickly and within budget. Many projects are now multi-channel, which only serves to increase the technical complexity.

Few enterprises have the time, or resources, to invest in building risky new applications. The solution being increasingly adopted by enterprises is to integrate what they already have with what they need to build:

• Application Assets – Your portfolio of enterprise applications and data stores is one of your most valuable assets. Everyone must focus on multiplying the value of these existing assets to create new solutions for your external users. How do you multiply the value of your existing applications and data stores, transforming what are often seen as expenses into valuable assets?
• Consumer Technology – It often seems that every new business requirement comes with an accompanying technology requirement, be it Web services, mobile phone interfaces, interactive digital TV or something equally exotic. The problem is that your existing systems were not designed for these sorts of requirements. How do you bridge these very different technologies?
• Application Islands – Your existing applications are islands dedicated to meeting the needs of a specific group of users. New projects increasingly require composite applications and services that combine aspects of the functionality and/or data stores of these islands. How do you create a consistent architecture for integrating with, and between, your application islands?
• Service-Based Integration – You must meet new business requirements, but not at the cost of the reliability, availability or integrity of your existing applications and data stores. Service-based integration keeps a clear separation between service providers (legacy assets) and the service consumers (new applications and users). How do you deliver efficient, secure and reliable services from your legacy applications and data stores?
• Experience Counts – Projects increasingly involve very different worlds. Your service providers know about the legacy world but are not familiar with the new types of front-end technologies. Equally, the service consumers have no experience, or interest, in your legacy technologies. How do you create a win-win situation where everyone can maximize the value of their experience and get the very best out of all the technologies being used?

Where to Go Next?

Read on to discover how SCORE Adaptive Bridges and Integration in Motion helps you to solve your integration challenges, multiplying the value of your legacy applications and data stores.