Using adaptive integration platforms to achieve visibility, control and governance

The task of integrating applications is increasingly moving from IT to line of business (LOB) managers.

This shift of responsibilities can cause a problem for some organisations as applications need to be integrated from on-premise to web, mobile and social channels.

Traditionally, application and data integration were considered specialty disciplines best handled centrally by the same IT teams responsible for development, implementation, and application management.

In the last few years, however, application ownership has increasingly moved to LOB managers.

As a result, many of those managers are also looking to do integration for themselves and not always with the best results for departments concerned or, more importantly, the organisation as a whole.

Organisations must provide LOB managers with guidelines to ensure they maintain visibility of any changes, governance and control.

“As applications are no longer just created in the realm of IT," says Stuart Rees, regional vice president – Australia and New Zealand, TIBCO Software.

"It is vital organisations don’t just deploy changes that meet individual employee requirements and fail to address the wider need for integration across a growing number of platforms.

“The potential scale of this problem is huge and should not be underestimated. Gartner, for example, believes that by 2017 at least 65 per cent of integration will be delivered outside the remit of central IT.

"One solution would be for CIOs to clamp down and insist on centralised integration in all cases but that would inevitably stifle innovation and reduce business agility.

“A better approach is to agree on an adaptive and layered method, with business units and central IT working together to deliver integration solutions.”

TIBCO advises an adaptive integration platform will help organisations:

* stop the explosion of different integration technologies

* embrace the LOB integration projects (projects happening outside of IT)

* align corporate goals by delivering a holistic view of the business.

“There are a number of platforms which can support integration needs," Rees says.

"For example, express technology can integrate on-premise applications with web and mobile projects, a cloud-based offering can integrate as-a-service and an enterprise platform supports all integration needs across the organisation.

“Integration has never been more important with the spread of mobile devices, social networks, the cloud and the increasing amount of big data.”