“The lack of good integration is a barrier to succeed in this world. Integration is now interconnection.” Those were the words of Forrester Vice President and Principal Analyst John Rymer in a recent webinar on strategy for integration of cloud initiatives.
“We’re in the age of the customer. Which means that in order to be successful, whether you’re a for-profit business or a public agency trying to serve your citizens better, whoever it is, those are your customers. They’re very empowered and often have better technology than we do. In order for us to succeed we have to serve them, empower them and understand them, and that need takes integration to the next level.”
Hiding Complexity While Creating Great Experiences
Rymer cites several examples of how different companies are linking what were traditional back-office functions to services that directly face their customers through their mobile devices. This goes further than transactions or information and involves creating whole environments to interact with customers in real time in a way that is a great experience.
His use of the word “interconnection” means linking together systems that reach down to the core of application design, extend across business networks, yield awareness and ‘smarts’ while being able to secure and manage the lot. Traditional point-to-point integration won’t manage this level of interconnectedness.
Technologists and business owners need to accept what’s coming as these systems are linked:
- Your message volumes will explode
- Your architecture will be different
- You will need a second lifecycle
- You will design business services
- You will learn new application-design patterns
“You still have Web.” When Rymer makes this statement, it becomes clear how far we’ve come and how much is changing. Who thought we’d ‘still have Web’ just a few years ago? What’s coming next?
For more, watch these webinars featuring analysts from Forrester Research and TIBCO on integration.
