Three easy steps to integration success (NOT)! (A post inspired by Thomas Wailgum’s tongue-in-cheek post on CIO Magazine here.)
1. Select integration vendor and then scope project…(remember, more expensive = better)!*
2. Install integration system!**
3. Get the integration vendor to show you how it all really works!***
Oops! We aren’t done yet…
4. Integrate your new integration system with other integration systems!****
5. Get your people trained (and who cares if that takes ten years)!*****
6. Sit back, relax, and enjoy having all your systems—ERP, legacy, cloud, etc.—integrated!******

Because who wants to wait on pesky details about what business problems you’re trying to solve, or on what scalability you’ll need for an unknown future?
Just plug in that box! Uhm…or another box…or a third box… Or simply download the code (onto a massive server farm!)
*Performance sort of verbally promised, but not detailed and not guaranteed.

*If you customized any of your software and as a result have trouble with integration, that’s your fault.
If you’re using software for which no pre-built adapter exists, you shouldn’t have done that either.

*Once you have everything working, don’t change anything or add anything (ever).

*Still having trouble? Adding more hardware won’t make integration run better or faster, but it sure will make your hardware vendor happy!

*Contrary to popular belief, the words “appliance”, “on demand”, “SaaS” or “cloud” as part of the integration suite product name doesn’t mean all your integration problems will magically go away.

*Lather, rinse, repeat.

*If it was fast and easy, where would the challenge be in that?
Just because SaaS systems are easy to buy doesn’t mean integrating them into your business will be easy.
****Expect stalking from some marketing person for a “Success Story” or quote in a very important press release, usually before implementation.

*FINALLY, it’s all working…until the next acquisition, or next trading partner needing to exchange data, or the next new “standard”, or…