IBM App Connect Enterprise introduction

IBM® App Connect Enterprise combines the existing industry-trusted technologies of IBM Integration Bus with cloud-native technologies to deliver a platform that supports the full breadth of integration needs across a modern digital enterprise.

By using the IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit, you can develop integration solutions and deploy them to IBM Cloud Pak for Integration, the dedicated runtime of IBM App Connect Enterprise software, and to IBM App Connect Enterprise as a Service. You can use an extensive range of administration and systems management options to manage your integration solutions.

IBM App Connect Enterprise can also use an extensive range of software-as-a-service (SaaS) connectors, which can run on premises or in the cloud by using IBM App Connect Enterprise as a Service. For more information, see the IBM App Connect Enterprise as a Service documentation.

You can use IBM App Connect Enterprise to connect applications together, regardless of the message formats or protocols that they support.

This connectivity means that your diverse applications can interact and exchange data with other applications in a flexible, dynamic, and extensible infrastructure. IBM App Connect Enterprise routes, transforms, and enriches messages from one location to any other location:

  • The product supports a wide range of protocols: IBM MQ, JMS 1.1 and 2.0, HTTP and HTTPS, web services (SOAP and REST), File, Enterprise Information Systems (including SAP and Siebel), and TCP/IP.
  • It supports a broad range of data formats: binary formats (C and COBOL), XML, and industry standards (including SWIFT, EDI, and HIPAA). You can also define your own data formats.
  • It supports many operations, including routing, transforming, filtering, enriching, monitoring, distribution, collection, correlation, and detection.
You can install IBM App Connect Enterprise in the following ways:
  • On a physical computer or server that runs in your own data center
  • On a VMWare virtual machine
  • In a Docker image, as part of an IBM Cloud Private installation, or installed by you into a public cloud such as AWS, or Microsoft Azure. The Docker images can be easily scaled and managed by using orchestration frameworks, such as Kubernetes, alongside other components within a modern architecture.

Your interactions with IBM App Connect Enterprise can be considered in two broad categories.

  • Application development, test, and deployment.
    You can choose from a range of tools that are optimized for the users' skill sets and the integration capabilities that they want to use:
    • For core IT teams that manage the key systems and packaged applications, rich tools support all styles of interaction, powerful mapping, parsing, and transformation. A broad range of functions is available, which include built-in unit testing, the ability to validate before deployment, and linked browser-based tools for the line-of-business teams. These functions ensure that both developers and nontechnical users can rapidly build integration without the need for code.
    • Knowledge workers and citizen integrators in lines of business can benefit from simpler, no-coding, web-based App Connect Designer to connect applications in the cloud and with applications and resources in hybrid environments. Alternatively, they can innovate on-premises applications to automate information and process flows by using a no-coding approach that takes advantage of the multi-tenant cloud runtime of IBM App Connect Enterprise as a Service.
    • Integration specialists can choose to use the web-based App Connect Designer to develop, test, and deploy general connections quickly. Or they can use a full integrated development environment (IDE) to tackle more-detailed and challenging integration requirements.

      Use the IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit to develop integration solutions to transform, enrich, route, and process your business messages and data. You can integrate client applications that use different protocols and message formats. The IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit is a natural and familiar tool for existing users who have experience with the IBM Integration Toolkit.

    When you develop, test, and deploy solutions with the IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit, you can use one or more of the supplied options to develop your applications:
    • Patterns provide reusable solutions that encapsulate a tested approach to solving a common architecture, design, or deployment task in a particular context. You can use them unchanged or modify them to suit your own requirements.
    • Message flows describe your application connectivity logic. This logic defines the path that your data takes in the integration node and the processing that is applied to it by the nodes in that flow.
    • Message nodes encapsulate the necessary integration logic, which operates on your data when it is processed through your integration node.
    • Message trees describe data in an efficient, format-independent way. You can examine and modify the contents of message trees in many of the nodes that are provided. You can also supply more nodes to your own design.
    • You can implement transformations by using graphical mapping, Java™, ESQL, and XSL, and can make your choice based on the skills of your workforce without having to provide retraining.
  • Operational management and performance. IBM App Connect Enterprise includes the following functions, which support the operation and performance of your deployment:
    • An extensive range of administration and systems management options for developed solutions.
      • The IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit.
      • The web user interface, which you can use to administer your integration nodes.
      • Applications that use the IBM Integration API.
      • A comprehensive set of commands, which you can run interactively or by using scripts.
      • The Representational State Transfer API (REST) allows development of administrative applications without the need to install client software and web browsers can administer integration nodes through a user interface.
    • Support for a wide range of operating system and hardware platforms.
    • A scalable, highly performing architecture, based on requirements from traditional transaction processing environments.
    • Tight integration with software products from IBM and other vendors that provide related management and connectivity services.