Integration Maturity Model Capability #1: Connectivity How improving integration supplies greater agility, cost savings, and revenue opportunity TAKE THE INTEGRATION MATURITY SELFASSESSMENT The TIBCO Integration Maturity Model was created using 20 years of integration experience and more than 4,000 integration platform deployments. Using the integration maturity online self-assessment model, you can compare your integration platform and organization with best practices, assess a breadth of capabilities, and decide which of these will deliver the most value for your organization: Connectivity Simple Integration Complex Integration Event Enablement Operations Organization and Governance Companies with mature integration capabilities have significant advantages over their competition, which include: Lower cost for development and maintenance of applications and other infrastructure Less time needed for implementation of new technology Preparedness for common initiatives like integration of the supply chain and implementation of software as a service (SaaS) applications Our online interactive integration maturity model (IMM) is a self-assessment tool that evaluates maturity for six integration capabilities. This whitepaper summarizes the self-assessments of hundreds of companies from the first section of the survey, Connectivity, and offers suggestions for those wanting to improve their integration capabilities and increase the advantages they receive from it.
WHITEPAPER 2 INTEGRATION YESTERDAY... A few years ago, the criteria for choosing an integration platform was more its ability to provide quality of service rather than support connectivity or fast development. In those days, each integration project had unique requirements, and the value of the project usually needed to be rapidly proven. In addition, integration usually meant making several solutions work together as opposed to just one. This situation resulted in a wide variety of technologies, but a narrow palette of options for addressing new integration challenges. Only small variations of already addressed use cases could be implemented. This infrastructure was sufficient for a time, but companies soon began standardizing on a limited number of technologies. Customers and employees began connecting directly to applications or through just one channel, and with just a few partners and highly standardized exchanges, the needs and criteria for integration platforms changed. CONNECTIVITY The connectivity axis of the IMM rates how organizations use integration to leverage information from their portfolio of technologies and applications: ERPs, legacy, custom, cloud, mobile, social, and web, as well as the applications of their partners. The average score based on hundreds of companies for all connectivity capabilities is 2.91 out of a possible 5.0. While accessing each and every technology is not required, seamless integration is important for applications that handle business information. Connectivity allows information to be exposed, exchanged with other applications, and used to streamline processes. Integration technologies that exchange information with applications speed up processes and make exchanges more reliable and less prone to error. These capabilities are inherited from the integration platform and technology. Information exposed by business applications can also be used in other types of processes, such as regulatory compliance or fraud detection. While such processes are typically performed sometime after the actual data exchange, there s value in making data delivery as fast as possible. You will be in a position to react while an issue can still be prevented, the data can be used to increase business and operational team awareness, and any change in business context can be propagated as soon as it is available. ABILITY TO INTEGRATE ALL APPLICATIONS Looking at the results from hundreds of companies who performed the selfassessment, the average organization has leveraged a common infrastructure to integrate between 30% and 40% of applications within a single line of business, but is not integrating between lines of business. As you would imagine, the value provided by integration platforms grows with the number of applications integrated. In addition, as the number of applications reaches critical mass, developer focus switches from creating services from scratch to reusing and leveraging existing integrations for new systems. The result is that organizations that have integrated a great share of their application portfolio are more agile. PARTNER, ERP, FILE EXCHANGE, LEGACY, AND CUSTOM APPLICATION CONNECTIVITY The most sophisticated integrations include partner applications, with the average score for the efficiency of this type of integration being 3.2. The average score for the ability to integrate using a publish/subscribe model, which includes most ERP integrations is 2.89, and for custom applications it is 3.15. Surprisingly, most custom applications are designed to manage both services and events, with the average score for this capability being 3.17. File transfers are also widely adopted, and are usually centrally managed. On average, respondents rated their efficiency in performing this type of integration at 3.06, partly reflecting the fact that this capability isn t usually integrated with the rest of a company s systems. Legacy applications, on the other hand, rely mostly on native custom mechanisms for integration, and the average score for the efficiency of these integrations is 2.53, reflecting the fact that the same technology or even technology that can be unified with other systems is typically not employed.
WHITEPAPER 3... AND TODAY Fast-forward to now, where the scope and importance of integration has completely changed. Today, we augment business capabilities by leveraging standard SaaS applications while we continue developing custom applications. The information about your services that you expose to customers is now as important as the services themselves because a rich ecosystem of partners is readily available who can further leverage that information, provided they can be easily onboarded. Today, integrating SaaS, custom, and partner applications is a requirement, but it is not differentiating. These days, an organization differentiates by combining business capabilities in a unique way. For example, many companies are analyzing data in motion and at rest, developing insights based on fast analysis of this data, using this knowledge to write relevant business rules, then applying those rules to respond very quickly to data in motion. Typical goals for this type of innovation are stickier user experiences and improved business operations. AXIS Web Channel Efficiency/Capability of Integration Solution Mobile Channel Cloud/Social Integration 4 3 2 1 0 Custom Applications Self Assessment ERPs/Applications Legacy Applications AVERAGE SCORES 3.03* ERPs/Applications 2.89 Legacy Applications 2.53 Custom Applications 3.16* Cloud/Social 2.60* Web Channel 3.04* Mobile Channel 2.71 *Based on a series of questions. The average scores from hundreds of respondents to the IMM Self-Assessment Tool. SaaS Newer applications and sources of information do not rank as high in organizations integration capabilities. Most organizations still synchronize SaaS applications via custom programs. The average score for the ability to integrate SaaS applications with processes in real time is 3.0. This is troubling given that SaaS offerings are often used to manage customer engagements. Everything that happens in these applications should be immediately accessible.
WHITEPAPER 4 NEW INTEGRATION PLATFORM CRITERIA Providing the right foundation for innovation not only requires the right technological choice, it also requires building the right integration capabilities in terms of technology, architecture, operations, and organization. When designed the right way, an integration platform can open doors to new capabilities that include: Abstracting: Consuming information from applications whether internal or external via a standard interface, which is unrelated to the technology or the application s data model. Abstraction makes it easier to acquire and use data from many sources. Decoupling: Using information provided by other applications without direct dependency. Decoupling lets you onboard or retire systems without impacting others. Exposing: Using the data from any application inside or outside the firewall in a totally controlled and secure way. Orchestrating: Combining data from all systems in net new logic that provides differentiating and innovative services. Leveraging: Spreading the features and benefits of your integration platform across the entire enterprise. By building the right skills and tools, you can continue to gain value from your investment by addressing similar use cases with the same platform. Reusing: Using services and applications in more than one project, reducing time to results. Industrializing: Ensuring short turnaround times and relevant quality of service matched to requirements. SOCIAL Regarding social networks, organizations typically don t integrate them. (The average score for this ability is 2.21.) Social posts are only managed after the fact. This scenario corresponds to an analytics use case where large amounts of data are used to identify trends. These same organizations lack the ability to engage directly or even consider social posts as part of their real-time business context. The same goes for the web channel: while organizations have integrated their web platforms (the average score for this capability is 3.31), most cannot capture business events in real time, such as an abandoned shopping cart; the average score for this capability is 2.7. MOBILE Mobile channels are mostly integrated via custom programs (average score is 2.7), showing that stove-piped architectures are separating mobile from other enterprise applications. This situation prevents differentiation using the same services on mobile as on other channels, and it also proliferates unbalanced innovation where new services can t be released on all channels at the same time. When demand for mobile services by customers, employees, and partners increases (often quickly and dramatically), these organizations sacrifice agility and double their costs by maintaining two architectures. Beyond the mobile channel, exposing an API can open new business territories, but most organizations are limited in this ability (average score is 2.1) due to lack of required control. CONSIDERATIONS FOR IMPROVING CONNECTIVITY MATURITY The value of connectivity is the ability to expose information quickly and easily without requiring custom development that can increase costs for implementation and maintenance. Leveraging existing integration technology shortens time to market, especially if this technology abstracts the complex APIs of the target technology. Organizations can become even more agile by choosing a limited set of integration technologies on which they can build skills, shorten their development learning curve, and reduce time to results. Of course, you need to ensure that the technology you choose provides connectivity that will serve current and future needs. When applied to the enterprise application portfolio, the average results reported here show plenty of untapped integration value. A few examples: SAVINGS FROM LEVERAGING PAST INVESTMENTS. Many legacy applications are still a vital part of business processes. Though their core business functionalities provide great assets for reuse in other services, many of their components and capabilities have since been replaced by other applications. Integration can be used to isolate and reuse core business functions and seamlessly retire those that are obsolete, replacing them with standard components. Integration also lets you leverage technologies such as an in-memory data grid to cache frequent requests and prevent an increase in mainframe costs.
WHITEPAPER 5 BETTER EFFICIENCY, CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE, AND ROI FROM SAAS. When SaaS applications are not fully integrated with the rest of the organization, their value diminishes in many ways. If they present out-of-date information (product data, master data), it can lead to inefficiency and create problems, such as customers ordering discontinued products. SaaS providers tend to release new features often, which can only be used when the application is fully integrated with business processes. SaaS applications also capture very valuable customer information, which, if not available to the organization right away, impacts the customer experience. Integrating SaaS applications as soon as they re implemented allows you to seize the full value of the investment. The return will be even faster if an existing platform is used for the integration. INCREASED REVENUE OPPORTUNITIES. By exposing business functionalities as API services used by mobile or other applications, you can expand your business opportunities in terms of customers and even use cases. First you have to expose the API, then you ll want to manage its use, attract developers, and control and monetize the service. An integration platform that connects to systems to invoke and orchestrate business services shortens the time to market for these initiatives. Get more information about integration, integration maturity, and products that can help you get there at www.tibco.com/integration. Global Headquarters 3307 Hillview Avenue Palo Alto, CA 94304 +1 650-846-1000 TEL +1 800-420-8450 +1 650-846-1005 FAX www.tibco.com TIBCO Software Inc. (NASDAQ: TIBX) is a global leader in infrastructure and business intelligence software. Whether it s optimizing inventory, cross-selling products, or averting crisis before it happens, TIBCO uniquely delivers the Two-Second Advantage the ability to capture the right information at the right time and act on it preemptively for a competitive advantage. With a broad mix of innovative products and services, customers around the world trust TIBCO as their strategic technology partner. Learn more about TIBCO at www.tibco.com. 2014, TIBCO Software Inc. All rights reserved. TIBCO, the TIBCO logo, and TIBCO Software are trademarks or registered trademarks of TIBCO Software Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other countries. All other product and company names and marks in this document are the property of their respective owners and mentioned for identification purposes only. 11/20/14