When building e-business infrastructures, organizations should implement tactically, but architect strategically. Translation, transformation, and routing meta data and application adapters are highly reusable for future e-business solutions. Companies that build leverage-able infrastructures will reap the rewards in subsequent implementations. Process automation focuses on integrating apps at a business-process level, rather than a message or event level. Process automation, offered by a number of EAI vendors, enables a company to design and integrate its business processes at a business level.
Some business processes require human interaction and processing.
Workflow solutions include notification and task boxes with people-oriented interfaces. Because of customer demand, process automation vendors are now adding workflow capabilities. Some EAI vendors are partnering with workflow vendors, with varying degrees of integration between the technologies. Before EAI, workflow solutions generally performed integration through a low-level API that required extensive coding and custom integration services. Retrofitting established workflow solutions for enterprise integration is, in some cases, more difficult than adding workflow functionality to a process automation solution.