| | JULY 20219CIOReviewAs many organizations make the transition to building cloud-ready applications, there are two main characteristics of such applications in this new world: Container-deployable and API-enabled.What this means is that regardless of the container management solution (such as Kubernetes), applications are deployed to a container, as opposed to a legacy virtual machine etc. By this token, even legacy applications can be migrated to a containerized environment with minimal changes. Which brings us to the second, more important characteristic ­ these applications must be API-enabled. Most legacy applications don't meet this criteria, where all functionality of the application is available via APIs (usually over a web service), even if they are deployed (lift-n-shift) to a container.Latest trends in EAIFirst and foremost, the growth of APIs has formalized the role of an API gateway. This is above and beyond what a traditional web services gateway does in a legacy application environment. It provides the solution for publishing APIs and managing access to them.What follows from API-enablement is the shift away from traditional EAI styles such as file transfers, shared databases etc. to more event-based notifications where latency can be configured from real-time to seconds to minutes to even hours.Now legacy integrations platforms (ESBs, Web Service/XML gateways etc.) will continue to provide integration to backend enterprise applications. However business rules and API management are getting delegated to API gateways, beyond just providing simple access to (native) mobile applications. In the same fashion, the primary way of integrating applications is evolving to publishing and consuming events i.e. event driven architecture (EDA), while using existing integration infrastructure.Impacts to business environmentIn this world of cloud-native and cloud-ready applications, EDA is the common thread that is having a profound impact on both business and IT. The business has to get better at identifying which business activities generate what events to be consumed by other business processes and functions, as implemented in technology solutions. IT, on the other hand, has to start using a business architecture model that maps business capabilities to business functions to applications/services in the solution design process; as well as change the application architecture where applications understand the context of business events such that generating/consuming new events becomes a matter of configuration.Where is EAI headed?The Internet of Things that is characterized by connected devices and is a key component of Industry 4.0, will work in conjunction with the Internet of Systems to build a world of connected experiences. These systems will work across enterprise boundaries and use a combination of other industry 4.0 technologies such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Machine Learning, and Big Data etc. to ultimately make decisions without human involvement. [Marr, B. (2019, July 11). What is Industry 4.0? Here's A Super Easy Explanation For Anyone. Retrieved from Forbes.] Whether in manufacturing supply chains or retail digital experiences or connected health, how will these systems communicate with one another? Most effectively by building Event Driven Architecture into their applications and using APIs over the cloud leveraging existing EAI infrastructure. Farooq Siddiqui
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