Business' New Requirement: Information Systems Integration - Methods and Technologies

Today, the integration of information systems has become a necessity due to the fact that the big companies have developed over time, mostly, separate information systems (which do not communicate between them) for the automation of different activities. If in the beginning the "situation" seemed to be under control, the boost in the number of customers, products, suppliers, etc. brought about an acutely increasing need for the companies' information systems to communicate with each other. Also, in its turn, the current economic crisis has increased the necessity to integrate the information systems within a company, thus simplifying any means of controlling the business. That is why in this paper we submit to your attention some types of information systems used by companies (Enterprise Resource Planning - ERP, Customer Relationship Management - CRM, Supply Chain Management - SCM) as well as possible ways of integrating these systems (integration through business processes and services). On the other hand, systems integration also implies integration of the data handled by these systems, so we will consider also some ways of data integration (databases, data warehouses) by means of technologies such as Oracle GoldenGate. Finally, we will describe a technique for testing, the integrated operation of a software product, more precisely, an integrated type of testing: Pairwise, a powerful testing technique.