EAI and Serverless Computing

What is EAI?

     Let us first begin with this question, "What is EAI?". EAI is abbreviated as "Enterprise Application Integration" and it is defined as an integration framework that is composed of a collection of technologies that serves as a middleware to enable the integration of systems and application of the enterprise. In other words, it is an implementation of technology that facilitates communication between the application of the enterprise. 

     For better understanding let us take an example of a bank. Nowadays banks have various systems or applications through which a customer can reach the bank. Few applications are net banking, mobile transactions, customer care, and so on. Here the bank has so many different applications through which a customer can communicate with the bank. These typically can't communicate with each other to exchange data. All these might have the same functions and each application function will reach out to the bank but here since they can't communicate with each other it might lead to data duplication and becomes inefficient. While doing so, all the similar functions might get overloaded in the "main bank system" which might be difficult to handle. To avoid this, a middleware comes to action. This middleware will act as an integration that helps the functioning of the particular process in a smooth way. What this middleware does is collects all the responses from the customer side and sends it as one to the main bank system. This middleware is where our EAI plays its role. EAI can help automate the process, eliminate data duplications, maintain end to end visibility, make better and quick business decisions to serve the customer better. So EAI is basically the use of technologies and services to enable the integration of the enterprise applications.

    The EAI system holds a lot of advantages. They are:

• The EAI bridges a gap between a lot of applications(like the one in the example) and programs and improves the business process by making integration smoother. 
• They are shaped in a way that they can adopt all processes that are being processed in a company. 
• The EAI also helps enterprises to solve problems in an improvised way. 
• Time consumption is really low and the workload and efforts are also reduced.
• EAI helps in building a sophisticated infrastructure in information technology and helps the exchange of information in a very secure manner.
• Even if certain operations in an organization are asynchronous or tedious, EAI helps in shaping it in a better way

The EAI can be implemented in business sections like CRM (Customer Relationship Management) which is one of the main factors in every business organization, Supply Chain Management, Business Intelligence Operation, and so on.

Serverless Computing

    Firstly, let us see about server-based computing. Server-based computing means running applications on the server while forwarding output to clients. This follows a three-tier architecture that consists of a database layer, an application layer, and a presentation layer. The database layer is where the database server will be, the application layer is where the code runs, and the presentation layer consists of the UI for end-users and in the presentation layer, the end-users interact with the application. It follows a traditional architecture where one will have to set up servers, Install Operating System and other required software, manage those software and architect them for high availability and scalability. 

Now here comes our serverless computing which changes the paradigm of server-based computing altogether. Apart from writing the code in the application layer none of the other parts are really required in serverless computing. It allows us to focus completely on the code building part and reduces the pressure on servers. There are no servers to maintain, no operating system to take care of, and no software to manage and upgrade. An application can be built with high availability and fault tolerance and simply helps in fast marketing.

    The serverless computing system has the following benefits:

• No Servers/Operating Systems: As discussed above you will not have to maintain any servers, there will not be any requirement to install any operating systems or any supporting software.
• Easy and Efficient Scaling: Serverless Computing can be scaled automatically, just within a few clicks one can achieve the desired capacity. There is no need to create any specialized scalable architecture.
• High Availability: This application has built-in availability and fault tolerance. Fault tolerance means the ability of the application to work fine even when any of the other components fail. So there is no need of having any specialized infrastructure to make applications fault-tolerant. These will be inbuilt and default in serverless computing.
• No idle capacity: This is biggest advantage of all, the user will have to pay only for what they use and nothing more. Serverless computing is cost-friendly.

    In a nutshell, serverless computing allows you to build and run applications without thinking about servers. When it comes to running an application from a cloud one will have to deal with setting a lot of parameters which is a quite long process. All these were replaced by serverless computing that helped developers focus only on building applications.

There are three main cloud platform players and they are AWS Cloud, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. Each of them has its own advantages.