EAI Goes Hollywood: Design of a Loosely Coupled Architecture to Manage Critical Business Data Flows at a Major Motion Picture Studio

Summary

An often overlooked reality when implementing a major ERP system such as SAP is that the new system will probably never replace all the legacy systems already in place. It generally becomes apparent pretty quickly that the new ERP system will need to share data with the legacy systems. Typically, in the past, these data flows have been managed by writing custom, point-to-point interfaces in which ASCII files are exported from one system and then imported into another for further processing.

Since the late 1990s, Enterprise Application Integration (commonly known as EAI) has captured the imagination of many an IS manager. And no wonder. Its promise is to integrate into a coherent and unified data processing model all applications within an enterprise, including legacy, hand-rolled custom apps and the more powerful breed of ERP systems such as SAP.

When a major Hollywood studio recently undertook a project to produce a Blueprint Design for the implementation of a new SAP system, EAI was high on their list of target accomplishments. There were literally hundreds of legacy systems, many of them hand-rolled on job databases and spreadsheets, that could not be shut down quickly, if ever, and that needed to participate in data flows with SAP. EDI was also a critical consideration. The challenge was to weave all these systems together in a business process-oriented way, including an existing EDI subsystem, into an EAI architecture that leveraged tools and skills that already existed within the organization.