SOA Research Library

As IT organizations move steadily towards automated operations and straight-through processing (STP), they need better tools to monitor the flow of information. Online business processes send and receive millions of messages every day via Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and other methods, and administrators must be able to quickly identify which messages didn't get through or didn't get a response.

Some analysts use the term "lights out" to describe these integration scenarios, but lights out doesn't necessarily imply hands off. Once companies set up the necessary business-to-business (B2B) and application-to-application (A2A) links using integration software, they look for ways to easily and accurately monitor these automated processes.

Some integration platforms incorporate business activity monitoring (BAM) tools to monitor transaction-processing activity. These tools generally maintain information in textual event logs. Administrators can review these logs to ensure that service levels are being met, and they can generate reports about transaction volume, throughput, and exceptions. But in the age of e-business, textual event logs are no longer sufficient. Organizations are ramping up their online trading activities, and they are demanding analytic reporting capabilities to analyze the huge amount of information that's being exchanged.

Advanced integration platforms include embedded business intelligence (BI) capabilities that help administrators quickly troubleshoot problems, detect anomalies, and conduct capacity planning exercises. In addition to auditing trading partner exchanges and sending alerts that trigger process adjustments, these BI solutions can alert individuals to changes and exceptions that may require action, as well as provide aggregated insight for strategic planning. Integration platforms with embedded BI tools are ideal for presenting and analyzing real-time transaction information. This white paper will explain what to look for in a complete integration platform and how to use BI technology in conjunction with BAM tools to achieve zero information latency and self-correcting processes.