Interoperability does matter

In companies, the historically developed IT systems are mostly application islands. They always produce good results if the system's requirements and surroundings are not changed and as long as a system interface is not needed. With the ever increas-ing dynamic and globalization of the market, however, these IT islands are certain to collapse. Interoperability (IO) is the bid of the hour, assuming the integration of users, data, applications and processes. In the following, important IO enablers such as ETL, EAI, and SOA will be examined on the basis of practica-bility. It will be shown that especially SOA produces a surge of interoperability that could rightly be referred to as IT evolution.