Toward the Development of a Model for the Adoption of Integration Technologies

The rapidly changing field of Information Technology has resulted in the development of diverse software applications based on heterogeneous platforms, standards, and architectures. Thus, most organizations confront significant problems with information sharing and business process automation and integration. Since the 1960s, organizations have deployed various integration technologies, such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), and Web Services to piece together their disparate systems. The EDI technology has been explored through the literature, and the main concepts and factors related to its introduction have been analyzed and explained. A need exists to investigate further the adoption of EAI and Web Services. As both technologies are new, the literature on their adoption is limited. In this paper, a comparative analysis of the main adoption models of integration technologies is presented, and common factors are identified and discussed. The authors propose that these common factors can be used as the main constructs of a model that might explain influential factors for the adoption of integration technologies. The proposed model is important as it might explain issues that will possibly affect the introduction of new integration technologies. Thus, the model extends the body of knowledge and contributes toward the development of a theory for the adoption of integration technologies.