The hybrid integration imperative–get on board!

Business leaders are more than just in a place to drive technology decisions, they are now empowered to act with autonomy and make technology decisions. This empowerment comes by a blend of the need to move at a pace to compete in this digital era and the evolution of and accessibility of cloud software and solutions.

There are huge benefits to the speed in which an organization or a business unit can experiment and innovate today. The Hybrid Integration Imperative is to align IT to support and enable the business.

The burden

There is also a downside, as the burden for this lands on IT.  IT is then inheriting the technologies and in inheriting technologies, they are forced to maintain them, to integrate and ensure their security and any corporate data involved. The Hybrid Integration Imperative is to mitigate this burden on IT and the larger organization’s risk.

Complicating matters for IT, these technology decisions are often not alone in the application(s) chosen.  The decisions a line of business makes often include integration decisions. This is then a collective technology choice—application and integration–is inherited by IT. The Hybrid Integration Imperative is driven by the opportunity of the business and by a need to ease the burden. Read more about the hybrid integration imperative and cloud platforms here.

A new perspective

At one time we called this Shadow IT and it was a bad thing focusing on the burden. Now we have new terms including citizen integrators and ad-hoc integrators where the positives are embraced. For the business, it’s the fittest that survive and those fit innovate—they can and will do what they need to do. And now IT must evolve as well. IT must flip the script and become an enabler to the business providing technology choices for integration tasks, by the business to experiment and innovate without the traditional model of IT involvement.

   “As digitalization shifts, its focus from technology to information, the CIO is changing from a delivery executive to a business executive—from controlling costs and improving processes, to exploiting data, driving revenue and scaling digital business.” Gartner, The 2018 CIO Agenda: Mastering the New Job of the CIO, 29 September 2017

Hybrid integration imperative

IT’s role is now a partnership with the business. IT must accelerate innovation, improve efficiency and reduce risk. To accelerate innovation, IT must empower business owners. IT’s role must change from that of a ticket taker serving the business on a project by project basis to that of an enabler of the business. This includes offering a self-service model driving scale and enabling the business to act with autonomy. This creates efficiency.

At the same time, IT must reduce business risk and in enabling business owners, they must do so with corporate governance to protect data. Businesses that thrive are changing. For the business to thrive, integration and IT must change as well.

Enter the era of the Hybrid Integration Platform and the Hybrid Integration Platform Strategy.