As a specialist integration company, we typically see our customers in four main areas in their journey to integration. Find our where you are, and get some recommendations for your next steps.
1. Greenfield
These companies may very well have some point to point integrations between some of their important applications – generally written quickly for some immediate business purpose with no strategy behind the design or choice of coding technique. These folks will not have an integration platform but may feel the need to investigate one, especially as several other point to point connections start to appear written by different people using different tools and standards which starts to become difficult to support and keep current. They are usually in one of two categories – they know they need it and are starting to investigate, or they’re oblivious – but starting to suffer from the effects of not having integrated systems. Typical questions they may be asking themselves are:
- Do we really need this?
- Are we ready for it?
- Are we big enough to warrant having integration?
- How do we choose / what do we need to do before we can choose?
- Who will implement it / install it / support it?
- Can we do this collaboratively?
In this case, we usually articulate the value of integration in terms of the competitive advantage it will bring. Having well-integrated systems can deliver better customer experience, more business, higher ROI, increased efficiency and new opportunities for growth.
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2. Developing
If companies have started integrating their systems, the next thing they often look to do is to build more maturity, standards and governance. Requirements may include finding resources to supplement an internal team, embarking on new programmes which involve integration, or they may realise that they cannot develop further without an integration strategy. Typical questions could include:
- How are we doing? Did we choose the right platform?
- What are our competitors doing?
- Could we get more functionality for cheaper?
- Can we expand from here? Are we ready for Cloud?
- Something has gone wrong – how can we fix it?
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3. Managed
Measuring, monitoring and tuning are keywords for this group. They have integrated their systems, and are now looking at optimising. The questions are more strategic, and they may require more or better automation or testing. Their typical questions may include:
- How do we better align integration with business objectives and strategy?
- How does integration become a business enabler?
- Is our work best practice?
- Are we leveraging our platform to its fullest extent?
- How can we best support the integration?
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Centre of Excellence – the best way to manage your integration
4. Transition
Companies which have been on a particular ESB / SOA solution for 4-5 years, will probably need to consider upgrading or transitioning at this point. In the case of legacy or end-of-life technology, they may be in a situation where the technology is no longer supported, and it may become an operational risk. Another scenario is that a company may have undergone several acquisitions and ended up with several ESBs which need to be integrated.
The main dilemma for transition customers is – do they migrate ‘as is’, to a similar platform, or do they go for a different path, such as microservices or cloud?
- If they choose to migrate like for like, do they have the documentation and specifications, and will they need to reverse engineer?
- If they choose a different path, how will they manage business as usual and the new development simultaneously? How do they test effectively?
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Want to change or migrate your middleware?
Integrella can help
We have worked with customers in all of these scenarios. From designing an integration from scratch, optimising and improving an existing integration, helping with a transition or migration, or sometimes just stepping in when it’s all gone wrong, we’ve seen it all.
Just drop your details in to the form on the right, and we can offer you a free consultation and get you on track to your journey to integration.