Description

Application Company Merger One of the more common reasons a company would consider an EAI project is to combine redundant systems following a company merger. These efforts can range from small integration projects connecting two siloed applications to wide-scale enterprise overhauls. The decision to integrate in these situations depends on whether the business value of integration outweighs the costs (which include not only money, but also impact on other initiatives or operations due to personnel workload) required to make the integration occur. For this Application, consider the following scenario: Your company has just merged with one of its competitors. 

This merger resulted in a downsizing of the combined staff as well as redistribution of responsibilities across the company. Your manager, responsible for the Human Resources IT division, tells you that the senior management of the newly formed company has decided that instead of merging the two existing HR systems, the two sets of systems will continue to run separately. Both HR suites, one a home-grown solution and the other a commercially available ERP-package, include similar features, such as payroll, identity management, time reporting, benefits administration, training records, and employee self-service. 

Although the companies have been merged, each system will only track the employee data originally housed in its separate database. Despite the redundancies, management is concerned that the effort required to integrate these two systems will be too expensive and cause too much disruption in the operations of the new company, particularly when the HR system is not a customer-facing service. Your manager is not convinced that this is the best approach, however, and wants your opinion. Based on what you've learned about the benefits and challenges of enterprise application integration and how EAI can contribute to the business value, write a 2-3 page memo to your IT manager in which you advocate for or against the integration of these two systems. Include in your assessment an explanation of EAI and its benefits and challenges in this situation. Also, respond to management's concerns about cost and service disruptions. Be sure to include specific examples and arguments to support your conclusions.