Being in the Information Technology field, sometimes it's difficult to explain what we do and how we do it. A lot of times, when we say we are in "IT," the listeners eyes glaze over and they immediately claim to not know anything about "that." When we read this article (Akron Hospitals link up to share lab results) from Crain's Cleveland today, the light bulb lit!

This a perfect "real world" example of a service we provide. For the past year, we have been working on an information-sharing project with a company in California. The goal of the project is to break down their current massive enterprise system into smaller parts (silos). This will enable the business units within the company to share information between these smaller "silos" more easily. Making changes to the silos can be done independently and pushed into production more quickly. The end result will also allow them agility and flexibility to quickly and cost-effectively adapt their business practices to the ever-changing landscape in their industry.

The Crain's article refers to the way information is shared as "interface engines." We refer to it as an "enterprise service bus." Essentially, they are the same thing - a tool for non alike (disparate) systems to share information.