Interoperability Across the Enterprise
Ensuring seamless interoperability between applications, software, services, and systems across the enterprise is crucial in building a robust IT ecosystem. With the increased adoption of SaaS applications and services, organizations seek a solution to create connectivity not only between the apps and services, but to enable seamless interoperability with legacy systems, databases, partners, and more.
What is Interoperability?
Interoperability is the process of ensuring applications, software, systems, and services are able to effortlessly communicate and run functions, so as to provide the user with a seamless experience. Semantic interoperability ensures that data transmitted between systems is clearly defined, ensuring consistent packaging and integrity. Interoperability within heterogeneous environments is crucial, as disparate systems have their own operating systems, frameworks, and languages. Ensuring interoperability standards are followed can be a challenge but doing so allows enterprises to function as a well-oiled, agile machine - giving them the competitive edge.
Real World Interoperability Challenges
Interoperability is vital across many organizations and industries as it enables businesses to reap the benefits of new technology without having to discard existing IT investments. Challenges surrounding interoperability are abundant within organizations, between organizations, and between organizations and consumers.
Nowhere are the challenges with interoperability more apparent than in the healthcare industry, as empowering clinicians, sharing lab data, images, and patient information is growing increasingly difficult. A lack of consolidated data and electronic health records (EHR) available across various departments makes it difficult to ensure efficiency, as patients often move between departments (e.g. inpatient, maternity, surgery, outpatient, etc). Moreover, when patient files need to be shared between healthcare organizations (e.g the sharing of lab results, images, patient history, etc.), the entire file needs to be requested, delivered and input into a new system before it can actually be accessed - a very inefficient method. Additionally, insurance and claim data is not easily shared between healthcare organizations, further complicating patients’ experiences. Seamless interoperability between internal systems and third party SaaS providers is necessary to empower and engage patients, deliver visibility, and improve health outcomes.
Interoperability Solutions
Organizations have implemented a number of solutions to overcome the challenges of interoperability. Often this involves deploying large vendors suites that offer both products and compatibility tools. The issue with this approach, however, is that these large vendors lack specialization in the industry. Moreover, relying on large-scale vendors can become a costly investment.
Businesses have also built custom code to create interoperability between applications and services within the organization. Point-to-point integration, however, relies heavily on experienced developers and does not scale well. When the number of endpoints within the organization increases, point-to-point integrations can quickly begin to look like a tangled web of connections, and eventually like “spaghetti code”. This entangled web becomes increasingly complex, expensive to maintain, and brittle - as even slight modifications can lead to issues throughout the ecosystem.
MuleSoft Enables Interoperability
MuleSoft understands the benefits that accompany interoperability and offers an integration solution to support interoperability across the enterprise. Mule as an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) has a growing community of over 175,000 developers and enables over 1,600 organizations in more than 60 countries to build application networks that increase the clock speed of business. Additionally, a cloud-based integration platform as a service, CloudHub, offers integration solutions for connecting SaaS and on-premises applications quickly and easily. CloudHub and Mule as an ESB provide interoperability capabilities for organizations looking to seamlessly flow data between systems. Interoperability benefits include:
- Increased productivity
- Minimized IT costs
- No complex integration code
- Compatibility across the enterprise
- Flexibility and Scalability
- Simplified flow of information
- Loose coupling of applications and services
MuleSoft offers solutions to create interoperability in the field of healthcare. With support for healthcare information standards such as HL7 and MLLP, organizations can create secure connectivity on-premises and in the cloud. Learn more about MuleSoft healthcare integration solutions by visiting the MuleSoft in Healthcare page and learning how MuleSoft enables healthcare organizations to accelerate IT innovation.
MuleSoft also offers integration solutions for businesses in all industries. Anypoint Platform™, a next-generation integration platform empowers companies to create connectivity across highly fragmented environments. With a robust set of solutions, Anypoint Platform helps businesses create interoperability between systems, software, and applications. With Anypoint Connectors working across both CloudHub and Mule ESB, companies can create instant API connectivity to hundreds of the most popular systems and applications. Moreover, by maximizing reuse and taking advantage of existing functionality, MuleSoft saves businesses from the traditional rip and replace methods that can be costly and extensive.
MuleSoft offers integration solutions to help businesses stay connected and keep their systems operating seamlessly. Learn more about MuleSoft and the capabilities of Anypoint Platform or contact us today to learn how to create interoperability across the enterprise.