Amit Kothari, Headshift - London AUG, April 19 2011

1. Integration
Considering patterns that let people work
efficiently and elegantly. The people and
business effects of systems integration.
Amit Kothari
Technical + Strategy Consultant
Headshift | Dachis Group
http://amitkoth.com

2. About Headshift ...

3. What is integration?
Wikipedia: EAI/Enterprise Application
Integration is the use of software and system
architectural principles to integrate a set of
enterprise computer applications
Gartner: The unrestricted sharing of data and
business processes among any connected
application or data source in the enterprise
These only address technology integration

4. Things working together?

5. Things inter-dependent?

6. Things presented together?

7. Systems integration
• Mediation pattern (central broker).
• Federation pattern (facade for apps).
• Data transformation to canonical form.
• Standard interfaces to content and services.
• Issues include compliance, Chinese wall
enforcement, permissions, compounded failure,
content synchronisation, content migration from
old apps, legacy vendors not having API’s, etc.

8. Why integrate apps?
• Atlassian products provide hooks to integrate
various platforms - but the canvas is wider.
• Standardise data/content and a UI - including
federated search and knowledge discovery.
• Simplifies business processes.
• Bridges silos of data AND process complacency.
• Technology “fosters” people integration.

10. Integration with surprises

11. Post integration effects
• If activity streams are consistent and well designed -
people enjoy the benefits of ambient awareness.
• An integration plan must allow for emergent
outcomes that are unexpected or out of the scope of
design or business intentions. Tools can often
produce these - e.g. a Confluence wiki.
• Don’t “set people right” with a tool - you can only
nudge certain use cases to happen. Adapt the
integration after thinking about real-life usage.

12. Integration & people ...

13. Roles in flux?

14. To end - food for thought
• Internal enterprise technology integration is not
enough. Businesses need to consider the inside-to-
outside integration that will be demanded by your
staff, clients, suppliers and the public.
• A key limb of the Social Business is “listening” on
the social web. Various slower-moving FMCG
companies will need to shift entrenched cultural
norms to (positively) respond to public chat.

15. A model listening platform

16. Thanks!
Your integration experiences/comments?
Amit Kothari - Headshift | Dachis Group
amit@headshift.com
Photo credits
http://www.flickr.com/photos/boellstiftung/5573772551/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewarchy/2723284303/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/judson/3727005445/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/carbontippytoes/3911231181/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/usarmyafrica/5412898561/
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