An enterprise layer based approach to application service integration. special issue on 'Process outsourcing & application service providers'

Today many companies rely on third party applications and application services for (part of) their information systems. When applications from different parties are used together, an integration problem raises. In this paper we describe an integration approach based on the construction of an enterprise layer. This approach is deliberately kept away from a document based, flow-oriented approach where business processes are hard coded into the application architecture. Interaction is based on the concurrent update of a shared underlying enterprise layer. At the same time, the application architecture becomes easily adaptable to re-engineered business processes.status: publishe