Ensemble Backgrounder

About Ensemble

InterSystems Ensemble® takes integration to the next level by making it possible to rapidly implement new business solutions that leverage the functionality of existing applications, orchestrate new business processes and integrate data across the enterprise.

The Business Case for Application Integration

Driving the growing demand for integration are business needs that are widespread and complex. High on the list are requirements to:

• Leverage Existing Assets
  In every industry sector, the Web has led customers to expect organizations to have a consolidated view of accounts, transactions and any other related information—regardless of where that information is located. Market success and survival means that organizations must provide improved data and application availability to internal users and external customers. Extensive enterprise application deployments have not replaced existing legacy applications and typically complement or extend those already in place. There is a critical demand to leverage the investment in existing applications by integrating them with new systems designed to enable changing, innovative business strategies.
• Improve Efficiency and Streamline Internal Processes
  For decades, organizations have been building islands of information designed to serve specific departments, divisions and groups. The result is large numbers of distinct, critical applications containing information and functionality unavailable to other organizational entities. To compete effectively, increase productivity, cut costs, shorten time-to-market, and improve customer service, executives at the highest levels are demanding the ability to access these operational systems across the entire enterprise.
• Ensure Competitive Success
  Markets are changing more rapidly than ever. To stay competitive and build market share, it is essential for companies to find new ways to be more responsive to changing market trends and new customer requirements. They need to find ways to better utilize up-to-date information to remove delays in managing and executing their critical business processes and strategies.

The Application Integration Market

Despite the fact that technology companies have been working to meet the fast-growing demand for integration, vendor competition in that market can still be fairly characterized as wide open. Infoworld, for example, describes the market as highly fragmented with first-generation leaders faltering. More than 50 percent of respondents to a reader survey, Infoworld reports, could not specifically name any integration software vendor.

Yet, the market demand is evident. In a report based on 2001 data, META Group projects the 2004 market for EAI software to be $9B, reflecting a compound annual growth rate of 78% since 1999. Projections for EAI-related services in this market are even higher for 2004, according to Gartner, which estimates them at $20B. In the same report, IBM is cited as the market leader, with a share of just 15%.

Failure of any vendor to take over the market thus far is a clear indication that rapid evolution of needs and technologies is still the primary market characteristic. Examination of the approaches to integration offered thus far goes a long way towards explaining why this is so.

Vendors now addressing the integration market typically fall into three categories:

• Best-of-breed component vendors such as Actional and Pegasystems that address just one requirement—adapters or business process management, for example—but fail to provide a single, comprehensive solution.
• Integration suite vendors including Tibco, Vitria and WebMethods that provide a strong integration approach and have their roots in messaging, but lack key components such as a tightly integrated application server, unified development environment and high-performance database. As a result, these vendors must create ever-growing assemblies of formerly independent technologies, introducing excessive complexity, redundancy and the potential for huge service fees.
• Application platform suite vendors—IBM, BEA and SeeBeyond, for example—that typically include a tightly integrated application server, but lack components such as a high-performance object database, transactional message warehouse and end-to-end management as well as functionality such as easier system diagnostics, rapid development and optimized resource utilization. Again, their solution is to add independent technologies to fill the gap, resulting in complexity, redundancy and excessive cost issues.

With Ensemble, InterSystems effectively creates a new solution category?a comprehensive integration platform with a unique, all-encompassing architecture that has the power to integrate even the most complex systems rapidly and efficiently, overcoming the barriers and high service costs associated with integration projects today.

Why InterSystems Can Deliver Success

Given the limitations of integration approaches that have been offered so far, it isn’t surprising that most integration projects are failing or falling far short of business goals. With Ensemble, InterSystems becomes the first company to deliver a solution that enables organizations to reverse this trend and to rapidly implement integration projects within timeframes that are surprisingly short and with vastly reduced service costs.

The Right Solution

One reason InterSystems can deliver success is the product itself. Ensemble is the only integration platform to incorporate the functionality of an integration server, application server, high performance object database, and a unified development and management environment in a single, architecturally consistent product. Contrasted with technology assembly initiatives and other complex integration technology solutions, Ensemble’s unique fusion of power and ease enables achieving business objectives rapidly and successfully.

The Right Company

Standing behind this breakthrough technology is InterSystems, a company that has built its reputation on delivering high performance, extremely scalable, enterprise-level software that supports rapid application development and deployment. InterSystems' post-relational CACHÉ database, for example, is the database engine that drives critical applications for such industry leaders as Ameritrade, Kaiser Permanente, Telecom Ireland, Mitsubishi Electronics and many others.

A Proven Integration Track Record

InterSystems recognizes that most executives have seen early application integration initiatives fail to meet business objectives. That’s why Ensemble is being introduced only after a wide variety of early adopters have worked with this full-spectrum business solution across the globe. Conducting pilot projects in the only environment that really counts?the user organization?developers and executives alike have reported extremely positive results. Representative examples include:

• Chenega Technology Services Corporation—This fast-growing federal systems integrator is developing an Ensemble-based pilot that will integrate multiple databases and applications and provide the business process orchestration needed to enable the Department of Defense to improve efficiencies and cut logistics costs.

An Ensemble Snapshot

Ensemble is a comprehensive platform that delivers the capabilities required for rapid implementation of enterprise integration initiatives.