With the worldwide economic slowdown forcing organisations of all size to drive increased value from their IT environments, the integration of disparate systems and the information they have stored within their databases has once again become top of mind.
And depending on the complexity of the environment and the various brands of technology being used by the company, this can either be a simple or a more challenging task.
“If the company is making use of a technology stack from a single vendor, such as Microsoft, integrating the company's different IT systems is a cinch,” explains Ryan Purvis, Business Development Manager at 3fifteen.
“The harsh reality is, however, that 3fifteen hasn't yet come across a customer whose environment consists entirely of technologies built by Microsoft, or for that matter, any of the other major IT vendors in existence.
“There is just no such thing as a homogenous environment today,” Purvis adds, “and for this reason, companies looking to integrate their disparate IT systems should constantly be on the lookout for tools capable of providing the proverbial glue between their different IT functions.”
While Purvis says Microsoft has always been a strong choice for customers with disparate IT systems, BizTalk Server 2009, which was released earlier this year, is a particularly strong choice, with its over 25 connectors for disparate business systems, databases and middleware solutions.
“Integration is really about the simplicity of the tools involved, the performance of the connectors that bring disparate systems together, the reliability of those connectors from a data integrity perspective, and lastly, the number of disparate systems such a toolset can join together,” Purvis continues.
“Add to that the fact that Microsoft excels at the delivering the primary reason most companies tackle integrating their line of business systems, namely customer relationship management and business intelligence, and it makes even further sense for companies to consider BizTalk Server as their integration solution of choice.”
Furthermore, by using Microsoft on both the integration and on the business intelligence/customer relationship management fronts, Purvis says additional benefits come to the fore.
“Generally speaking, the implementation of a new IT system results in an often costly and generally unforeseen change management project, which will include training for staff on the new system and teething problems as IT staffers become familiar with a different set of back-end management tools.
“With the Microsoft environment, new applications and services tend to make use of a common, easy to understand and most importantly familiar user interface - so the need for change management is greatly reduced,” he says.
Purvis says that the value proposition of integrating a set of disparate systems with Microsoft technology and then placing Microsoft business intelligence and customer relationship management solutions on top of that to bring the business valuable insights has become so compelling that 3fifteen has begun fielding calls from large customers that were previously end-to-end Oracle and IBM shops.
“The cost, simplicity and agility with which 3fifteen can roll out such a solution adds the final motivation most customers need to take the Microsoft route forward.
“We're expecting this year to be extremely positive with BizTalk 2009 on the scenes,” he concludes.
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