Integration is no longer a nice to have. It is an indispensable foundation critical to enabling greater efficiency, agility, and growth. Over the coming weeks, we’ll look at common pitfalls that hold back integration success.
#1 – Forgetting the E in ESB
How many times have we seen an initial success fail to get traction across the enterprise? It can be painful to watch all of that effort fail to translate into enterprise-wide benefits, or worse, create more work when the time comes to think bigger picture.
We know why it happens: Parts of the organization invest at different times and for different needs. Big efforts have big risks that take very high-level approvals that are hard to get. Sometimes we can’t see the forest for the trees and other times we take when we can get.
But there are ways to head off this challenge. I call it “Putting the ‘E’ back in ESB”.
Putting the E back in ESB means aligning infrastructure capabilities, even in the early stages, to enterprise-level requirements. Architected in a systematic way, it should enable the organization to focus on new initiatives, dynamically respond to change, and flexibly support growth.
A few areas to consider…
- High-availability and scalability – Demands on the network can rapidly increase as ESB adoption rises, more services are deployed, and reach is extended across mobile and B2B channels. What degree of availability, scalability, and support should be anticipated to ensure a consistent end-user experience by employees, partners, and customers?
- Connectivity – Application landscapes can vary drastically across the organization – and change dramatically over time. What degree of connectivity will be required to support existing and future portfolios (incl. mobile, social, cloud)?
- Real-time visibility – As technical issues can impact the business, enterprise services require enterprise-level attention. What level of visibility will be necessary to identify trouble spots before problems become bigger issues?
Putting the E back in ESB means thinking ahead in ways that don’t slow down the early efforts but reduce the risk small successes can’t be turned into enterprise successes.
Stay tuned for #Fail Part 2: coming January 24.
