|
Advanced
How To Guides
Systems Integration
How To Choose The Right Way
One-size-fits-all
doesn't fit integration. There are numerous types
of integration, and you may need to use one or more
to meet a particular business need in a way that makes
implementation as quick as possible and keeps long-term
management costs down. But which ways would work best
for your company?
It is essential to plan strategically as you make
your integration decisions, to lower maintenance costs
and total cost of ownership. Always build to manage
even when deploying tactical solutions, which tend
to increase maintenance costs over time. There's always
a need to balance tactical business
requirements with the long-term viability of the systems
you select.
Reusability is a key benefit of the larger, more expensive
integration platforms - they typically provide the
flexibility and configurability to suit a wide range
of situations - but it is also a critical element
for turning tactical implementations to longer-term
advantage. All too often a poorly-implemented tactical
strategy misses out on some level of strategic thinking,
including the opportunity to leverage common tools,
or previously-developed infrastructure. Each business
requirement could well indicate different integration
patterns, either at the same of different times, so
the opportunity to generate complexity and high maintenance
costs over time is fairly extreme, and it's one of
the main points that needs to be watched when attempting
tactical integration.
Lacking the IT resources and budgets of larger companies,
SMEs need to "get it right first time".
A wide variety of software solutions are available
for SMEs that want to pursue integration as a way
of improving their business processes. However, these
enterprises need to know what to look for in an integration
software and services provider. Some important qualities
include:
- Ability
to satisfy the needs of SMEs
Because of the limited internal IT skills available
in SMEs, any products they buy must have been specifically
designed to be easy to install, configure and manage.
The need for custom coding must be minimised, because
it will require ongoing maintenance with upgrades,
and interfaces must be available for the types of
applications typically already installed in SMEs.
- Different
economies of scale
Although SMEs offer software vendors a potentially
huge customer base, they also generally have less
money to spend on an individual basis. This means
that providers must deal with a larger number of
clients, each offering a smaller revenue stream.
To remain profitable, solution providers must revisit
their traditional billing structures to fit these
new economics. SMEs must find a provider who has
worked this concept into its business plan, and
who can still offer a good deal and complete the
integration project.
-
Ability to use existing business processes
SMEs aren't typically seeking to completely re-engineer
their business processes around an integrated solution.
Instead, they are seeking software and services
which will allow them to use their existing resources
- people, processes and applications - more effectively.
The
following criteria should be considered when seeking
the right path to follow:
- Ease
of use
This is a priority issue for companies of all sizes,
but is of particular concern to SMEs which lack
the resources to provide extensive training to employees,
or to engage consultants for a protracted period
to get the product to "work for them".
-
Pre-packaged integration points
SMEs need integration to be a workable process,
so they must actively seek solutions which can easily
integrate with other applications. The application
interface approach involves programming to the vendor's
supported interfaces. The computer technology that
may apply here can vary, based upon what the vendor
provides. Five years ago all developers had was
C, C++, and Visual Basic programming calls. Nowadays,
products provide object-oriented interfaces that
can be scripted as well as programmed. This usually
means developing custom code that will need to be
maintained.
- Proven
technology
Unlike larger companies, SMEs should choose proven
technology rather than the latest features: being
early adopters can carry an unacceptable level of
risk for smaller companies.
Remember
- integrating applications does not necessarily need
to involve the creation of an all-encompassing EAI infrastructure
up front. Although in the long run such an infrastructure
can return a greater level of benefit, short-term benefits
can be gained through a simpler, more tactical approach.
A correctly planned and deployed tactical approach does
not mean that a full infrastructure cannot be attained
in the future - it can and should, in fact, provide
the early steps along the road.
It is also worth highlighting that you do not need to
start with the deployment of all the different types
of technology and tools available to aid applications
integration. Although each technology type has a role
to play in the spectrum of integration projects, any
individual project in itself may require relatively
limited technology requirements for success. Follow
the tried and tested "80:20" rule, and start
with the 20% that will return 80% of the benefit.
The tactical approach might involve, as a first stage,
just "point-to-point" integration of a few
applications to pass data from one to another. A modern
file transfer based tool can often provide the functionality
needed to achieve the required level of integration
in such cases. Although it may seem strange when reading
all the articles written about complex EAI infrastructures,
over half of application integration today is still
achieved through a simple combination of file transfer
and job scheduling.
|
