How VARs Can Benefit from Enterprise Application Integration

By Zia Askari

Working closely with global software vendors such as Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and Dell, VARs can take advantage of a dearth of application integration solutions and create their own mark within the enterprise space.

Today’s large and small enterprises operate in heterogeneous applications environments which are quite complex in nature and hence they always need support in order to create more value for their business users.

As more and more enterprise customers look for better application integration capabilities, this is creating more opportunities for software vendors as well as their associated VARs than ever before, however,  companies that develop and sell software solutions and must determine how to effectively co-exist and interoperate within such environments and deliver the best in class value for the enterprise.

It is important to note that there is no shortage of methodologies or technologies, not to mention customer philosophies, when it comes to software integration. But VARs can adopt some of the best practices in order to generate best value for their enterprise customers and gain their loyalty over a long period of time.

As with any other segment, application integration also has its share of challenges but partners can overcome integration challenges as they develop, implement, support, and promote standardized, reliable, and tested integrations for the enterprise.

Develop, Validate EAI Approach

As VARs reach out to their enterprise customers with software vendor solutions on application integration it becomes very important for them to have fully developed and validated solutions around EAI that can be positioned to solve enterprise challenges around applications.

And once the application integration models are developed, VARs need to validate their solutions so that enterprise customers can experience the capabilities, first hand. The validation activity can have a documentation review and demonstration process that, upon completion, provides enterprise customers confidence that the partner integration has been tested and validated as functionally and technically sound for further adoption.