Novel taxonomy for application integration

Abstract

One of the main motivations associated with the adoption of electronic commerce (e‐commerce) is the integration and automation of business processes. Yet, for many years the integration of systems has been a barrier to business process automation. However, a new generation of software called application integration (AI) efficiently addresses integration problems and leads to more flexible and maintainable solutions. AI incorporates functionality from disparate applications through a diversity of integration technologies. Regardless, confusion surrounding terminology in the integration area has led to a debate regarding the capabilities of AI, as each term proposes a different range of AI technologies. Therefore, there appears a clear need to clarify this confusion. In doing so, a novel taxonomy is proposed, which is based on the critical analysis and evaluation of existing case studies extrapolated from the AI literature. The proposed taxonomy separates AI into intra‐organisational AI, hybrid AI and inter‐organisational AI. The novelty of the taxonomy centres on the synthesis of a comprehensive set of systems that efficiently describe the range of AI technology in terms of application. In doing so, the taxonomy presented will allow developers and integrators to navigate better through the portfolio of integration technologies and therefore better understand the integration area. The proposed taxonomy might also be used as a tool for decision making.