5 Reasons to Get a Real Center of Excellence for Integration

Ah, integration! A subject that is close to my heart! A central subject in the IT of companies and in their good conduct. Unfortunately, while it is a central and clearly contemporary subject with API Management among others, integration is often considered as "has been." Like the new mainframe, for which no new development would be made (which is a bit of an urban legend by the way...).

The truth is quite different. API Management, microservices, iPaaS, message buses, data streaming, all this is integration! Let us, therefore, look together at the good reasons for considering integration to the point of having a center of excellence for integration.

Because It Is a Transversal Competence

Every project needs integration at some point. But the primary need is not integration! The primary need is to deliver value to the user, which implies focusing on functionality, user experience, respect for costs and deadlines, etc. Integration happens because either data is needed or because you are forced to make your data available, without any real willingness on the part of the project owner of the data. Delegating the integration work to a dedicated team, at least in governance and methodological and technical framework, is a thorn in the side of the project.

Because It's Not Such a Well-Shared Knowledge

How many projects I have seen that have wanted to expose its data in APIs that did not follow basic good practices. How many projects had to address a technological stack that they discovered with the project. All of this with the inherent risks of quality/time/cost. A center of excellence for integration makes it possible to gain on this triptych quality/time/cost ratio. (if it is well managed, I see you at the back of the room telling me that you know an example!)

Because a Dedicated Team Will Be Able to Create Even More Value

I will start with an example I heard recently. In a company, several applications retrieved weather data essential to the business, each via separate weather data providers. Of course, the price differed greatly for an equivalent data quality.

Only a team dedicated to integration was able to address the issue in this case. As a result, several million euros are saved per year. Considering the size of the team, we can think that this economy self-finances this team very well on its own!

This is an example, of course, but there is even more to say, don't worry! Indeed, this team then becomes an essential entry point for architects and projects to know the accessible functionalities and data of IT. Knowing what features exist on a particular domain can potentially take only... 5 minutes if you ask the question to the coffee machine! Let's move on to the gain in user-friendliness that this famous coffee machine represents. But the time saving is reduced from weeks or months to minutes. You should be able to do a quick and approximative ROI calculation, the figures may convince you...

Because You're a Psychopath of Normalization

Okay, well, my title is a little overused. But if you want to standardize your data and stack, I would advise you to set up a center of excellence for integration. To make it faster for your developers to jump from one project to another. To save time. I let you complete the triptych:)

Because It Is a Specialty

API, iPaaS, ESB, Message Oriented platform. Do all your developers follow these topics? Do they know the roadmap of these solutions? The patterns? Do they jump for joy when the latest version of WS02 is released? Does your project developers have a Tibco sticker on his laptop? If not, it means it's not their cup of tea. That's all!

What about you? Why do you think a center of excellence for integration is essential? Drop a comment!