Customer Data Integration: Reaching a Single Version of the Truth

THE CDI HUB IN THE IT ARCHITECTURE

Up until now we’ve illustrated an architecture that’s centered on moving customer data from source systems to client applications. Integrating a CDI solution into a production data center and the typical technologies that might already exist are also important considerations for selecting the right CDI solution. CDI technology can provide a significant amount of flexibility and performance improvement to an IT infrastructure if positioned correctly. Let’s review some common technology components already in place in many IT environments and compare and contrast their functions with the CDI hub. In particular, the hub will have the most impact on an existing EAI message bus (otherwise known as enterprise service bus [ESB]), data warehouse, EII, and SOA environments.

CDI and EAI

Enterprise application integration technology has evolved significantly over the last few years. While it originally sprang from the need to manage transactions across multiple application systems, it has become a critical architectural component that can support business process automation and transaction management.

Not long ago, developers had to develop custom code to transport messages between applications. EAI and the advent of the ESB allowed developers to construct a utilitarian interface to support messages moving across numerous applications. This freed application developers from worrying about the details of message flow between systems. Managing message ...