Many attempts have been made to standardize IT functions and capabilities, but the reality is that no two organizations have the same IT landscape. Even for those who have selected the same ERP vendor, the systems will have been customized to meet the organization processes and needs.

This means that when planning your integration design, you should keep in mind that each organization may have their own way of invoking smart contracts and may not have the same IT capabilities or policies.

As an example, exposing events through Web Socket may make sense for an organization who is familiar with cloud-based technologies, but other organizations may not have the skills, or their IT security policies may not allow them to use the protocol.

While it may seem surprising to some, keep in mind that a network can be a mix of Fortune 500 organizations and start-ups. Consider the supply-chain industry for a moment; you will find some trucking company with little to no IT infrastructure, all the way to industry behemoths. Clearly, one size may not fit all.

Having said that, from a network perspective, you should consider the degree of support the network wants to provide to joining organizations. There are two possible approaches:

•  The network provides an integration asset: This can take the form of a gateway that each participant deploys in their own infrastructure. The gateway is standard for everyone and manages the invocation of the smart contracts in a consistent manner.
  This can provide the benefit of accelerating the on-boarding process, but requires consideration about who owns, manages, and supports this IT component. Furthermore, some organizations may not want to deploy this piece of infrastructure due to trust issues.
• Each participant builds their own integration layer: The obvious downside of this approach is the recreation of the wheel by all participants, but it reduces the potential support issues created by deploying a common component in every organization.
  This may also be the preferred approach for use cases requiring deep system integration to achieve the benefit of process optimizations.