7. EAI and ERP

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems are packaged applications that deal with classic business issues such as finance, invoicing, supply chain and human resources. They are widely used, initially by very large companies and now by small and medium-sized businesses, for the good reason that they dispense with the time-consuming and costly development of in-house applications. However, they are often difficult to install and upgrade to new versions. The best-known ERP vendors are SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards.

Most ERP systems now feature client/server or Internet/intranet architecture.

It's difficult to get ERP systems to communicate with each other, just as it's difficult to get an ERP system to communicate with a legacy application. This is why EAI is particularly well-suited in this context.

ERP...