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By Graham Hayday, 25 May 2000 00:20

COMMENT We need another three-letter acronym like we need a hole in the head. ASP, ATM, CTI, ISP, LAN, GIF, WAN, WAP... the list is as long as your arm, if not longer. Of late, a new TLA (three-letter acronym) has appeared on the scene: EAI, or enterprise application integration. But is this fad going to go the distance, or fall by the wayside like so many of its brethren? Chances are, it's here to stay - at least until bricks-and-mortar companies have their ecommerce strategies in place. In essence, EAI involves consolidating all the legacy applications held within an organisation to ensure everyone has the same, real-time view of the business - and can hence pass necessary information onto customers. We've heard of many instances where this clearly isn't happening. For example, there's the telecoms outfit whose Web site said cable hadn't been installed in a given road while a customer service operator said it had. And then there's the computer supplier whose finance staff did not have access to the same data as its call centre agents. In this day and age, that isn't good enough. Most organisations have legacy applications scrapping them and starting from scratch isn't an option. So EAI could be the answer. It's a relatively cost-effective and increasingly standards-driven area that takes advantage of another TLA - XML (extensible mark-up language). Yet research conducted by UK firm HiServ has found that two-thirds of IT departments have little understanding of the subject, and do not realise how much simpler it is than equivalent processes, such as interfacing. Admittedly, HiServ is an EAI specialist - but the clear business benefits of this particular TLA could well mean it becomes the key technology for established companies who want to play ecommerce catch-up with their nimbler dot-com rivals. It's a boring three letter acronym all right - but its effects are anything but dull.