Chapter 12 Data and Systems Integration

The document discusses the importance of data and systems integration for organizations. It states that integration enables communication and data exchange between different IT systems and applications using common standards. This allows organizations to improve productivity, reduce costs, and get different internal and external systems to share information. Successful integration requires identifying key business goals, governance, infrastructure, staff skills, compliance with regulations, security practices, standardized platforms, and collaboration between departments.

Uploaded by

qwira analytics

Available Formats

Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

0% found this document useful (0 votes)

40 views

Chapter 12 Data and Systems Integration

Uploaded by

qwira analytics

Available Formats

Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

You are on page 1/ 5

Chapter 12 Data and Systems Integration

Talk of ‘integration”, “APIs”,” system interfaces” and “interoperability” dominate almost

every corporate and government boardroom when discussing Digital Transformation.
The integration enables communication and exchange of data between various IT
databases, applications, and even hardware equipment. APIs (Application Programming
Interfaces) are the interfaces that are available in the “co-operating” systems that
enable data and information exchange using agreed global standards.

The main reason organizations use integration is their need to improve the productivity
and quality of their operations. The goal is to get the organization’s various IT systems
to “talk to each other” through the integration, to speed up information flows and reduce
operational costs for the organization. But integration is no longer just for your
business’s internal IT systems, it is also for third parties that the company relies upon to
offer services.

Business Growth

We live in the so-called “API Economy” where different providers specialize in the
collection of specific data and provide it as services to others. This may be paid or free
with the consumers being other departments within the entity or outside. This is the new
way of life and like it is always said, “If you don’t embrace change, change will change
you”. But why must leaders champion integration and the API economy? What is the
motivation?

Because integrated environments foster the quick movement of data and information
across departments and companies, less time is spent to deliver services and there is
more efficiency in deployment resources. In silo setups, time is wasted collating,
inputting, and searching for data from disparate IT systems. As result, integration has
the potential to improve business growth.

This business growth is also a result of improved data accuracy, better management of
the IT and Data portfolio, and improved decision making. Particularly for decision-
making, the ability to analyze critical data in one location using modern techniques such
as big data and AI makes integration very important for any enterprise.

Preparing for integration

To successfully partake in the benefits of integration, leaders need to start by identifying

their business strategic plan, understanding their product and service offering, and
mapping their key stakeholders and partners. This involves building a strong business
case that highlights how data will improve business decision-making or even improve a
company’s operations.it should be noted that not all data available to a company
constitutes “the right data” and therefore companies must set out key business
questions related to their customers, markets, the competition, or even mandate, for
public organizations, to identify their data needs. Consideration of long-term data needs
such as: planning for emerging technologies and upcoming regulations are also
important.

Data Strategy

According to Bernard Marr in his book “Data Strategy”, another critical consideration
before integration is data governance. Data governance involves putting in place
measures to, identify critical data sources for the business, tackle data and information
security, data ownership, and privacy. Data governance structures should be in place
for any integration project to succeed as it provides order in the data integration and
operations life cycle. It is not news that one of the major impediments to integration
especially in the public sector is the issue of “mandate” and data ownership. Companies
must ensure that these issues are sorted out early to enable free movement of data and
information.

Infrastructure and Technologies

For successful integration to happen, organizations need to identify sources of data that
shall answer their set out business questions. These data may be internal or external
either from in-house ICT applications, spreadsheets, external APIs. These sources of
data must be supported by viable infrastructure and technologies.

Organizations need to put in place infrastructure to collect, store, share and process
data from internal information systems and external sources. Applications should have
readily available and secure APIs to enable data exchange with other applications and
databases. Furthermore, organizations should make careful economic considerations
about on-premise versus cloud infrastructure investments for data and integration
technologies.

The Right People

Availability of the right staff, to see through the integration agenda is another key
consideration for companies. It is usually the case that companies find it easy to hire
staff with technical skills in software engineering, data integration, and analysis,
statistics as so forth. The real challenge however is influencing a cultural and
organizational change that covers all business functions in the company. Besides
further training, staff must be rallied to appreciate the benefits of integration and their
roles should be clear.

Legal and Regulatory Compliance

Depending on your business or area of operation, both national and international laws
and regulations will affect how organizations collect, process, and share data. In most
countries just like in Europe, Data Privacy and Protection laws have been enacted to
protect individuals and their data by regulating the processing of personal information by
state and non-state actors, with those countries. Organizations should endeavour to
prepare for compliance with any existing laws related to data sharing, manipulation of
storage.

Security and Integration

Any form of integration especially those involving third-parties outside your organization
is bound to prevent security risks associated with, receiving malicious requests for data,
unauthorized interception of data, or even overwhelming requests that cripple the
serving infrastructure (so-called “denial of service” attack). Therefore, CEOs, CIOs,
boards, and other leaders must carefully assess any integration initiatives to avoid loss
of critical data assets, reputation, and in some cases funds as a result of security
breaches.

Hard security questions must be asked before signing contracts with third-party service
providers and other companies. One way is to ensure that independent audits are
carried out of the prospective partner to ascertain their levels of security. On key
security controls for integration is real-time monitoring of all transactions with the ability
to identify any anomalies emerging using intelligent software.

As they say, “Data is the new oil”. Effective handling of data and integration will ensure
continued business benefits for organizations.

Avoiding the “ Spaghetti”

Integration of systems, data, and applications if not handled well could introduce a
complex web of connections, the so-called “spaghetti” which poses immense
management and security challenges for the IT team. Leaders must therefore ensure
that companies put in place standard integration platforms and interoperability
frameworks, to enable standardized integration and sharing of data across the board.

Popular integration platforms according to Gartner include Informatica, Oracle, Dell

Boomi, Microsoft, Apigee, WSO2 among others. Companies can explore the best-fit
solutions considering their specific economic and technical capabilities.

Collaboration

If you have worked in the public sector you will agree that the different agencies
jealously guard their mandate when it comes to data collection and sharing. It is not
news that the laws, guidelines, procedures, and regulations that empower agencies or
departments, are sometimes written ambiguously which leads to “legal interpretation”
battles between the legal personnel for each of the entities.
Leaders must move to iron out any such grey areas and disagreements between
business units early, to avoid any disruptions during integration projects.