Over the past twenty years, enterprises have created many diverse systems to manage their information and data. Individual systems combine a myriad of hardware configurations, operating systems, databases, and applications. Often, individual enterprises have found themselves with several disparate information systems among their divisions and departments, especially after mergers or acquisitions have broadened the scope and depth of the enterprise.

As the world, not to mention the enterprise, networks more completely, the enterprise needs to integrate its diverse systems to operate and analyze its resources more effectively. Numerous external sources, from partner information resources to real-time data feeds, have become available. The enterprise needs to marshal and integrate these disparate systems. At the heart of the systems integration challenge lies an information integration challenge.

Model-driven integration differs from the programmed integration. Programmed integration relies upon hard-coding a finite, and inextensible, solution to a particular challenge. Model-driven integration focuses on abstracting the information content into a model that describes the enterprise’s information resources. This model captures the nature of the information the enterprise has within its systems and the way the enterprise uses data in its daily operations.