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Don’t Have an Integration #Fail, Have an Integration #Success

February 25, 2013 by Kevin Jordan 1 Comment

Stop failing to plan with your integration initiatives and start to plan for integration success. Over the past weeks, we have run precautionary warnings about the risks of failing to integrate systems and common mistakes in bad implementation. Heed our warnings and be careful you do not become a statistic for companies that failed.

Welcome aboard Integration Success

We started this integration ride with companies that often forget to think about the enterprise in the enterprise service bus (ESB). Before getting back on the bus, we have to make sure that infrastructure capabilities are aligned to enterprise-level requirements and the company can put the E back in ESB.

Further down this ride, there were some companies that decided to lie in the path of the oncoming bus. Hiring programmers to write computer code might be a quick fix to a solution, but with different coders using different programming languages, it becomes impossible to attain a holistic picture of the company. Using a bus-based architecture will allow the company to manage connections with applications through one interface. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Integration, SOA Tagged With: disparate systems, enterprise service bus, ESB, integration, integration fail, Service Oriented Architecture, SOA, succeed

How Can You Have Any Apps If You Don’t Eat Your Data?

February 19, 2013 by Amitava Kundu Leave a Comment

Getting the right apps into the hands of your customers quickly requires an infrastructure that can handle the load. Assembling the components is tricky because there’s a combination of new data and old to manage in the moment for the best customer experience. Telecom companies like T-Mobile need to be able to handle this exponential increase in data volume, and also analyze this new source of data to deliver the right services to each customer.

Anticipating the newest mobile app is like waiting for the next blockbuster movie; it’s become a major event. With top lists of most popular apps published per month and even per week, there is a whole market around interest in apps. Ruzzle, a word game resembling Scramble, earned the top position on iPhone apps charts as the most downloaded game in January, giving us the first big hit of 2013. Of course, the runaway success story of 2012 was Snapchat, a photo-messaging app, where users were sending about 50 million snaps a day. Think about the volume of data these two apps alone are producing. It’s staggering. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Integration, Mobility, SOA, Tech Trends Tagged With: ANDROID, Big Data, DATA INTEGRATION, DATA TRANSMISSION, integration, IOS, mobile, MOBILE APPS, mobile device, MOBILE GAMES, SOA, telecom, Telecommunications, WIRELESS

Integration #FAIL – Part Four: Don’t Let the Bus Leave Without the Passengers

February 7, 2013 by Rhianna Richards Leave a Comment

It is a huge fail to only consider the technology aspect when making any large-scale operational change like integration. And it’s all too common: a big project is approached solely from a technology, IT perspective without full adoption by the business users and ends up being taken for granted. There is a problematic disconnect when you hear, “Haven’t we been doing this already?” which is indicative of unclear communication and worse — complete lack of understanding of any new capabilities.

Why does this happen?

We forget that even technology initiatives like integration are always just as much about the people as the new tech. Ignoring buy-in from key people across the organization breeds resistance to change with people protecting their own interests.

Properly implemented integration gives an organization the ability to build on its skills, to expose information from systems to accelerate processes and leverage events for better operational efficiency that are lost if not used correctly. With the people disconnected from the capabilities of the new tech, this investment is wasted in favor of more of the same. We often hear about skilled engineers who return to their old habits when push comes to shove. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Cloud, Integration Tagged With: cloud-based systems, Gartner, gartner report, icc, integrate, integration, Integration Center of Competence, Integration Center of Competence (ICC), it, SOA

Integration #FAIL – Part 3: Lacking a Common Language Across Your Enterprise

January 31, 2013 by Kevin Jordan Leave a Comment

Learning a new language gives you access to a whole new world, lets you grow closer to people and cultures, and have experiences that you never had before. Without knowing the local language, you might be able to meet your essential needs in that culture, but you would be stuck when it comes to communicating at a higher level.

Integration is the Universal Language

Business systems are much the same. Because each business application has its own language and style of communicating, information becomes trapped in business and application silos. The information needed to have an end-to-end view of an enterprise is somewhere between difficult and impossible to find.

Integration of applications is like solving the problem of communicating across human cultures and generations. Applications need a common language to prevent chaos and lost opportunity. Fortunately, there’s a time-tested solution: SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) interfaces are the translators that make each application speak a common language so that messaging and other integration applications can bring together people with the information they need. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Integration Tagged With: computer code, integrate, integration, integration fail, integration platform, programming language, SOA, soa interface

Integration #FAIL – Part 2: Lying in the Path of an Oncoming Bus

January 24, 2013 by Rhianna Richards Leave a Comment

Point-to-point integration can be a quick fix for getting information from system to system. All it takes is a bit of code and voilà – connection complete!

But what happens when the programmer who wrote the script falls off the face of the planet? Inevitably, a change will be submitted by the business. Just how long will it take to find the keys that unlock the black box?

A single instance might be manageable but if you’re like most organizations, dozens of hard-coded, point-to-point interfaces run beneath the surface of application development projects.

And chances are, developers used different technologies over the years, making it difficult to know where issues lie, let alone what could be causing a problem.

It could take an army to overcome a situation like this on a larger scale, not to mention escalated cost. So the question becomes: how much of your business’ agility and resources are you willing to put at risk? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Integration, SOA Tagged With: bus, business, ESB, integration, integration fail, SOA

Integration #FAIL – Part 1: Forgetting the E in ESB

January 17, 2013 by Rhianna Richards 1 Comment

Integration is no longer a nice to have. It is an indispensable foundation critical to enabling greater efficiency, agility, and growth. Over the coming weeks, we’ll look at common pitfalls that hold back integration success.

#1 – Forgetting the E in ESB

How many times have we seen an initial success fail to get traction across the enterprise? It can be painful to watch all of that effort fail to translate into enterprise-wide benefits, or worse, create more work when the time comes to think bigger picture.

We know why it happens: Parts of the organization invest at different times and for different needs. Big efforts have big risks that take very high-level approvals that are hard to get. Sometimes we can’t see the forest for the trees and other times we take when we can get.

But there are ways to head off this challenge. I call it “Putting the ‘E’ back in ESB”.

Putting the E back in ESB means aligning infrastructure capabilities, even in the early stages, to enterprise-level requirements. Architected in a systematic way, it should enable the organization to focus on new initiatives, dynamically respond to change, and flexibly support growth.

A few areas to consider… [Read more...]

Filed Under: Integration, SOA Tagged With: ESB, integration, SOA

Like the Wright Brothers, TIBCO Helps Scandinavian Airlines Innovate in Air Travel

December 5, 2012 by Kevin Jordan Leave a Comment

Orville and Wilbur Wright are credited with developing and building the first successful airplane. While they were not the first to build and fly an experimental aircraft, in 1903 they were the first to innovate the revolutionary concept of fixed-wing flight. Based on this fundamental shift in essential airplane architecture, we now have airplanes that travel the globe faster and better than anyone could have ever imagined. Every airline has them to thank for their business success, and Scandinavian Airlines understands the importance of safe and comfortable travel. Scandinavian Airlines is the fourth-largest airline in Europe and transports over 23 million passengers to 92 destinations in 33 countries each year.

The airline industry might appreciate the Wright brothers for their innovations in flying, but many other processes are critical to commercial airlines including customers and passenger service. As in most industries, unseen internal processes often get taken for granted, yet are just as important. Scandinavian Airlines is known as a technology innovator within the industry. They began migrating to a service-oriented architecture (SOA) infrastructure in 2002 and now have approximately 60 to 70 services in use internally and externally. Just as every airline and pilot can be grateful for the Wright brothers, Scandinavian Airlines also appreciates the unseen help and support TIBCO provides to the company. TIBCO’s platform-neutral approach to SOA is helping the airline manage services across heterogeneous platforms – a critical success factor in their environment. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Automation, Integration, SOA, Transform, Transportation and Logistics Tagged With: airline, airplane, Innovation, innovation series, integration, Real Time, scandinavian airlines, SOA, TIBCO

Fastest Cars in the World Rely on Pirelli Tires

July 18, 2012 by Amitava Kundu 1 Comment

A Pirelli-supported team smashed the outright circuit lap record at the Australian GT Championship at Winton. “We’re very happy with the pace of the Pirelli,” Maranello Motorsport engineer Pat Cahill commented post-event. “Jonny Reid hadn’t driven on the Pirelli before, and he was impressed with the pace and consistency of the tire.”

Let’s take it to the highest level: FORMULA ONE racing have the fastest on Earth – cars with speeds up to 220 mph with frequent hairpin turns, often on slick tracks. Milan-based Pirelli – exclusive tire supplier to FORMULA ONE racing through 2013 – uses TIBCO technology to circulate essential, real-time race data to FORMULA ONE Management (FOM) and FORMULA ONE teams.

Pirelli Decides to Speed Things Up With TIBCO Technology

With TIBCO, Pirelli became faster and more accurate in collecting, sorting, analyzing, and reporting key performance indicators (KPIs). Data processes that once consumed 90 days, now through integration, take just 30 minutes to generate the latest KPIs on business units and individual products. With these real-time indicators now readily available enterprise-wide, decision makers not only see Pirelli more clearly – they manage it more skillfully.

Pirelli’s reliance on TIBCO’s real-time data backbone doesn’t stop at the FORMULA ONE circuit; it extends to the marketplace, where competitive pressures are equally intense. In the case of Pirelli, “21st-century efficiencies” mean integrating a global network of some 10,000 distributors and retailers. Every time Pirelli integrates a distributor into the system, the company boosts profitable growth.

TIBCO integration made Pirelli more profitable by balancing inventories to ensure that each time a customer enters a store, the right tires are in stock – no more, no less. With TIBCO-powered integration, Pirelli gathers optimized results on the race track, generates new profit, and optimizes work processes and information flow to reduce total costs of ownership for its distributors.

“We capture practice sessions, qualifying sessions, top speeds, lap times, intermediates, flags, accidents, and the position of each car on the track and in the pit lane. The engineer of each team uses this real-time data to better understand the car, the track, and how to optimize performance. It’s an advantage enabled by Pirelli’s TIBCO integration.”

– Fabrizio Orioli, Pirelli’s Integration Service Manager

Read the full story here.

Filed Under: Automation, CEP, Event Processing, Integration, MDM, Transform Tagged With: FORMULA ONE, innovation series, integration, Pirelli, racing, Real Time, SOA, supply chain, tire

How Increased Data Visibility Via Mobility Can Optimize Workforce Productivity

July 11, 2012 by Amitava Kundu Leave a Comment

“Work is something people do rather than a place people go,” aptly describes the necessity of a mobile workforce in today’s business environment. You are not likely going to wait for your field executive to reach the office to analyze reports collected on-site. When you have the latest mobile devices and communication infrastructure that makes distance irrelevant, you want to work on those reports immediately and possibly make an immediate decision while your field executive is still on-site. Having the power of information in the palm of your hands gives you the edge in providing your customers what they need.

In companies with a mobile workforce, critical information is sent from field staff working with suppliers and customers to back-end office systems that are used to run the business. Capturing and making use of that field data in real time and integrating it with business-critical systems helps a company build stronger integrated business processes. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Automation, Integration, Mobility, SOA, Transform Tagged With: data visibility, innovation series, integration, mobile workforce, Mobility, SOA, workforce management

21st-Century Global Banking Finds New Success Factors

May 3, 2012 by Amitava Kundu Leave a Comment

The globalization of banks is not a new business model for revenue maximization; however over years of geographic expansion, banks have understood that maintaining quality of service standards for a consistent customer experience is the secret to success. Customer satisfaction, cost reduction, and profitability in global operations have surpassed growth as the primary objective, especially in the aftermath of recession. Paramount to keeping customers coming back to your bank, especially today’s tech-savvy consumers who cannot live without the internet, smart phones, and tablets – is the ease of doing business that matches the intuitive ease of the consumer web.

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