Integration is the Application

April 8th, 2013 by Mark Herring

As we have been preparing our webinar series on Innovation through Integration, I keep coming to the same conclusion that integration isn’t just a nice to have, or a piece of infrastructure to consider. Rather, integration is the name of the game. In fact, integration has become the application. I am sure there are exceptions to the rule, and the makers of the very popular game Angry Birds probably don’t have any integration needs, but for the purposes of most of the customers I deal with integration is the new application!

In my role, I have the privilege of meeting with exceptionally bright customers to hear what they are doing. Most of these customers tell me that they are witnessing the effects of the nexus of 4 forces – Mobile, Social, Cloud and Big Data. A lot has been written about the nexus of the four forces – Mobile, Social, Big Data, and cloud. But, I think more importantly it’s not just that the forces exist, but what are these combined forces creating?

From what our customers are seeing, we believe these forces are creating proliferation of 3 key assets: Data, Services and Devices. It is this proliferation that is pushing integration to be the key focus for all new applications.

Data Proliferation

Big Data is everywhere and the newest and probably hottest area in the marketplace but integrating this big data is key to deriving business value. Data integration can be as “simple” as creating a single view of the customer – basically creating a single logical record of the customer data across the enterprise so that all interactions with the customer are consistent, and all relevant data is considered as part of that interaction. As one of our customers who is in the pediatric healthcare business put it, this single view isn’t a nice to have but it saves lives by ensuring all drug interactions are known and factored in from their pharmaceutical, surgical and ER systems. But, data integration can be much more complex, involving statistical pattern matching, algorithmic correlation and producing a model that predicts whether a particular transaction is safe or fraudulent. No matter what the application, if you are talking about data proliferation you probably need some form of integration to bring this all together.

Services Proliferation

My prior blog entry on “Big Services” describes this area, but consider a relatively simple transaction of shipping a product from your favorite online retail site – there is probably dozens of services that need to be integrated together to provide a seamless experience – Customer data from one or more services, product data from another service, logistics data from the warehouse, preference list from a predictive analytics service, shipping time from the shipping service, credit verification from the card issuer, etc. This is a very simplistic view since products usually come from one or more partners, and the logistics and product availability is derived from warehouses across the globe. Net net, though, is that integration of these systems is key to ensuring that the customer has a great experience.

Device Proliferation

Much has been said about Bring your own Device (BYOD) and the need to have applications that address iOS, Android, Windows, web, and the multitude of screen sizes, but the real device proliferation is around the “Internet of Things”. Integration of the information these devices create is a key enablers to new applications. Consider another customer of ours who is in the recycling business. They integrate GPS data with telephony data, and create an application where customers can view where the recycling truck is and alert the customer when their recycling container has been picked up via a text message. Again, it is the integration that makes this application interesting and compelling.

What This Means for You

Integration is the application, and it is only through integration of existing assets that new compelling applications can be created that provide differentiated value. You need to have a plan and partner that takes the proliferation of data, devices and services into account and allows innovation through integration, only then will you truly have applications that take your business to the next level. Conversely. I challenge you to find the application that has no integration!