Data integration is a broad term describing several rich application spaces including ETL (extract, transform, load), EAI (enterprise application integration), and a more recent addition, EII (enterprise information integration).  The market’s expectations of the role a data integration tool should play within the organization has changed.  In response, vendors are looking to increase the flexibility and functionality offered by their platforms and to search out niches of functionality by reacting to the shift in focus of the marketplace. This has resulted in industry consolidation across data integration vendors.

Alongside this industry consolidation, database vendors such as Microsoft and Oracle continue to add and augment bundled ETL capability.  Regardless of the solution chosen, as businesses face increasing challenges to integrate data from an ever increasing number of diverse systems, the software employed to enable that integration has be flexible enough to meet the challenge.