iCore Integration Suite

Integration is all about taking control of your data. When you connect your systems and applications it opens up new ways to automate and improve your business processes. If you manage to take advantage of the potential in integration, you will become a more agile and profitable company.

iCore Integration Suite (iCIS) is a toolkit for business integration which lets you design, implement and monitor data flows between your internal systems (SOA/EAI), as well as with external partners (EDI/B2B).

Solutions built in iCIS are scalable and allow you to start small and grow step by step. Event-driven architecture and packaged accelerators enable quick and loosely coupled integration with a large number of ERP systems and other applications. Integration with iCIS is a first step towards a genuine Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).

iCIS is designed for industrial reuse and a low Total Cost of Ownership, with user-friendly administration, support and version handling. The iCore license model is based on the number of partners/applications (connection points) involved in the integration and the number of CPUs on which they operate. The model allows you to start small and extend your solution when your organization and budget is ready for it.

Dynamic architecture

iCore Integration Suite has a modular architecture that promotes SOA and event-driven information flows.

The runtime environment – iCore Process Server – coordinates and performs integration and process automation between surrounding systems as well as in-house applications. iCPS is fault redundant, scalable, and supports clustering and use of multiple CPUs. iCPS uses a sophisticated event and activity control – business processes and logic are described by connecting a series of events and activities in information flows, which may be given different priorities. When a flow is configured and put into production, iCPS is in full control of what to do and when.
The design tools in iCIS let you define and configure integration components tailored to your business requirements. The Adapterflow Wizard makes it easy to quickly set up single-control flow logic. The Developer is a flexible script-based tool for developing and generating advanced business processes and integration. The Workflow Designer provides you with a graphical user interface where you can set up advanced integration logic based on a comprehensive library of activities for data transfer and processing.
The Administrator provides an overview of, as well as detailed information about, the status of all integration flows handled by the iCore system.
Accelerators are packaged, wizard-driven configurators that help you build time and cost-effective interfaces between external or internal applications/partners.

Integration design

iCIS lets you configure information flows between Partners. A Partner can be a business partner, for example a customer or a supplier, or an application, such as an ERP system, CRM system or a web shop. For the integration engine in iCIS, it makes no difference – it only needs to know what information is going where and what needs to be done with it along the way.

iCIS provides wizard-driven configuration and graphical development tools for more advanced interaction logic. All tools have been designed for time-effective, robust and reusable integration development that do not require traditional coding. iCIS contains a library with integration and process scenarios, shortcuts and templates, all of which are included in the license fee.

The product suite is designed to require a minimum of administration. Solutions may be centrally administered, for example for monitoring and upgrade. Speed and performance are hardware dependent and, if desired, the solution may be amplified by adding more CPU power.

Secure data transfer

iCore Integration Suite enables secure transfer of data from one system to another within as well as outside your organization. It supports a number of different communication protocols, for example FTP, FTPS and SFTP. There are packaged accelerators for sending files via SMTP, HTTP, HTTPS and Web Services and message transport mechanisms for browsing or creating Microsoft Message Queues (MSMQ) or WebSphere Message Queues (WSMQ).

Functionality shortlist

iCIS facilitates real-time integration across the entire enterprise. This topic contains a summary of the technical functionality included in iCIS.
Technical requirements

iCore Integration Suite has been designed to be moderate in its hardware and software requirements. Speed and performance is hardware-dependent and if needed, more CPUs or computers can be added, with full fault redundancy.
Security

iCore Integration Suite provides comprehensive security both on a platform and communication level.
Integration concept

The integration concept in iCIS is based on loosely-coupled services according to the SOA model.
Runtime engine

iCore runtime is responsible for the execution of Component definitions through Events and Jobs.
Design Tools

With the tools available in iCore Integration Suite (iCIS), you can design and develop solutions that fit your business processes perfectly.
Testing

Set up a dedicated test system and try out complete process flows before implementing them in a production system.
Track and trace

The cutting-edge track and trace functionality in iCIS helps secure critical information flows between systems and produces detailed information trails that can stand up to any audit.