Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) can be defined as the uses of software and computer systems architectural principles to integrate a set of enterprise computer applications.

Businesses today are driven by unrelenting competitive pressure in the global business environment, applications such as Supply Chain Management, Customer Relationship Management, Business Intelligence and Integrated Collaboration environments have become crucial for any organization that needs to maintain their competitive advantage. Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) is the process of linking these applications and others in order to realize financial and operational competitive advantages.

When different systems can’t share their data effectively, they create information bottlenecks that require human intervention in the form of decision making or data entry. With a properly deployed EAI architecture, organizations are able to focus most of their efforts on their value-creating core competencies instead of focusing on managing data flow . As organizations continue to move toward a service-oriented world, the real goal—creating effective business processes that unite disparate systems into a coherent whole—comes within reach. Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2 supports this goal. Like its predecessors, this fifth release in the BizTalk Server line allows connecting diverse applications, then creating, executing, and monitoring process logic that uses those applications. The objective is to help organizations create, manage, monitor and better automated business processes.

Business Process Management is the next evolutionary step beyond traditional enterprise application integration, business-to-business integration, or custom-coded integration. Businesses compete on the flexibility of their processes, and BizTalk Server delivers tools to more quickly optimize processes at a lower cost.

BizTalk is a key part of the business user experience, business process automation or the system-to-system component of traditional application integration and/or business-to-business integration. Regardless, customers now require a Business Process Management (BPM) solution that encompasses enterprise application integration (EAI) and business-to-business integration (B2Bi) while providing increased business visibility.

Hyperlink to Microsoft BizTalk Server home page : http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/default.mspx