5 Factors to Consider When Building a Modern B2B Integration Architecture |
Posted: June 11, 2019 |
The concept of Business-to-Business (B2B) integration has been around for a while, and businesses are exploiting its benefits to optimize their productivity and efficiency. Owing to their importance, today, it is easy to find B2B integration software that assure you efficient integration.For most businesses the selection entirely depends on their investment capability and capability of the application to support their daily business processes. However, modern B2B integration architecture demands a few more considerations, if you plan to exploit the value of your investment. This post discusses 5 some well-known and less-known factors of consideration that will help you or any other business trying to build a robust and advanced b2b integration architecture.
1. Support for Futuristic Technologies:A study by Bain suggests that enterprise IoT market will reach $520B in 2021. According to a report by Research and Markets.com, more than 50% of enterprises will utilize the benefits of AI by 2023. In recent years, there has been an increasing demand for AIoT - Artificial Intelligence (AI)+ Internet of Things (IoT) solutions. The convergence of AIoT is being effectively exploited in various industries to mitigate complex business challenges. The report by Research and Markets.com also suggest that in a few years AIoT will power next-generation networks, cognitive computing, smart machines, and data analytics. If you are considering B2B integration solution in the near future, it is important to assure the B2B integration architecture is capable of supporting IoT, AI, and AIoT data flow in the future.
2. Supports All Message Types:All trading communication between two businesses are categorized into two main types - synchronous and asynchronous. In the synchronous type, the sender expects a reply from the recipient, and this type is sometimes referred to as request/reply. In asynchronous type messaging, the sender doesn’t expect a reply from the recipient. This type of messaging is also known as fire and forget. Asynchronous message-based integration has emerged as one of the key technologies in enterprise integration. This type of communication takes into account three message and data transformation factors - message propagation protocols, message propagation format, and message and data transformation. Hence, it is important to consider a B2B integration architecture that supports: standard file formats such as EDI, XLS, XLSX, XML, HIPAA, HL7,etc., as well as industry standard data formats such as EDIFACT, EDI,ODETTE, MISMO, ACCORD, etc; message transport protocols including SFTP,AS2, JMS, Email, API, etc.
3. Supports Hybrid Integration:The cloud and on-premises systems are not a new concept. The cloud is gaining strength, and will be in demand for a long time. However, on-premises systems are equally important, and one cannot favor one over the other. Knowing all these, business enterprises are nowadays favoring hybrid architecture that allows them to take advantage of both concepts. However, cloud-to-on-premise integration may not be easier because many legacy b2b integration solutions do not support them. Thus, when building a b2b integration architecture, it is important to consider its capability to support hybrid integration. Many advanced B2B integration solutions support this hybrid integration by providing features to integrate databases, legacy systems, and warehouses. They facilitate cloud to ground integration by ensuring continuous data flow between processes, people, and companies. 4. Supports Various Connection Models:Across most enterprises, the trading partners are connected to each other through either of the following models:
With business enterprises experimenting with hybrid connection models, it is important to ensure that the B2B integration architecture meets their unique requirements. 5. Supports Various Modes of Integration:B2B data integration is a generic term, and may involve several complexities, which are often ignored. For instance, your company may want to create a data warehouse by combining information from multiple sources into a single database. This may allow you to retrieve data whenever and wherever possible, and in a useful format. Similarly, some other business that accepts a huge volume of information than yours may want to create a data lake. It is important to ensure that you choose a B2B integration architecture that is scalable and elastic to support your future needs.
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