Integrate Your Vendors

One of the challenges of managing vendor-provided software is getting all the parts to play together. This section discusses the issues of integration and offers some approaches to resolving them.

What Are Technical Components?

Technical components can be separate applications or Web services or database services. They are the building blocks that are required to deliver your application.

For example, Microsoft CRM consists of Web services application components, a Web server, and a back-end database. Other applications might deliver data in flat files or data transmissions. These subsets of business information are individual components of your technical solution.

One-Stop Shopping

Preintegrated solutions attempt to provide one-stop shopping for all your technology needs. To the extent that they are successful, these integrated solutions can save you the trouble and headache of doing your own integration.

The problem is that not all applications provide everything you need, and sometimes you'll find that one application does a better job of supporting customer service, whereas another does a better job of supporting sales. In that instance, you might want to consider using “best of breed” composition.

“Best of Breed” Composition

“Best of breed” composition delivers the desired functionality by pulling the best from two or more different sources or solutions. The ultimate goal of Web services is to make it possible to construct your own solutions from a series of application components, which have been developed to open standards so that they automatically match up.

In “best of breed” composition, the goal is to identify your required services (see services prioritization matrix), and then determine whether to make or buy the components you need. It's a good idea to make the components that are part of your core competency, on the assumption that you will incorporate strategic advantage. Components that are not strategic, but supporting, can be outsourced, bought, or licensed ready-made.

Until Web services are much further along in terms of adoption and thorough coverage of the marketplace, you'll find that some components still need quite a bit of integration. It might be worth it to gain better functionality of your systems, or you might find that in some cases composition is the only way to meet all your requirements.