Last week I lectured on JBI and Open ESB to IT people. At the end of the presentation a delegate asked the awkard question: “Do you think that integration is one of the real concerns for the companies and not just a new buzz word or fashion”. We were at the end of the lecture and I had no time for a long and detailled answer. Be persuasive was a real challenge. In order to convince my interlocutor, I did not try to give him further detail on the “I” of JBI but simply I told him story that happened few days ago at Pymma consulting.

Here in UK, if you don't come from the big consulting agencies like Cap Gemini, Accenture or IGS, the companies are used to test the contractors during the interview . The tests are interesting theoretical exercises that often reveal the current IT preoccupations of the company.

By chance, four of our friends’ architects went for interviews and brought back the tests for debriefing. (Pymma is not IGS nor Accenture “thanks God”). The first had an interview with a software editor, the second with one of the largest retailer in Europe; the third with a major utility company in Benelux and then the fourth with an automotive manufacturer.

We compared the different tests, we were amazing to discover that the test topics were very similar.

The test requirements were as follow: “We want to create a new reliable, secure and scalable application bla bla bla ... For all the cases, the key requirements were: This application must be easily integrated in the company IS, able to communicate with legacy application and external partners. Integration was the key point requirement of the tests !!!

I don’t know if the four companies are a representative sample of the market, but it is clear for us that integration and agility are fast growing concerns for IT Teams.

I don’t know if I wan approval with my story, but regarding the tests similarities we are convinced that design and implementation of architecture dedicated for integration is the present challenge for many companies.

To be continued …