There is a shortage of local IT skills in system integration, which is leading to costly and complex problems not only for IT, but for business.
This is according to Hedley Hurwitz, MD of Magix Integration, who says the problem lies in skills development at a tertiary level.
“Lack of skills increases the cost of doing integrations and this cost is transferred to the customer. And every year, the issue around local skills development and understanding of the different IT platforms is progressively becoming a bigger challenge.”
Hurwitz adds: “It's hard to find technicians with years of skill and experience in integration. Now the industry has got a more formalised IT learning community, but it isn't doing enough to provide the correct skills. Many of these teaching institutions are churning out certificates and not providing enough real hands-on experience.
According to Hurtwitz, getting different systems to communicate with one another is critical and requires a skilled integrator who understands the different platforms. He says losing a single piece of data could be detrimental to a business.
He explains there is no silver bullet when it comes to integration solving a problem. “A lot of people have burnt their fingers with integration projects that have failed due to lack of skills.
“The discipline around middleware is something we enforce - there's not such thing as a perfect piece of middleware or integration that will solve every possible nuance of moving data from one place to another.”
On defining integration, Hurwitz says there are many descriptions of integration. “At the end of the day integration is about bringing together different platforms, applications and systems for the purpose of either streamlining processes and to have visibility and measurement of those processes. It's also about consolidating and replicating information over various systems.”
According to Hurwitz, a successful integration project can enable an organisation to save on expensive upgrading costs by achieving the full potential of their current systems. “Over time, integration evolves into a symbiotic relationship between several systems that are all contributing and working in tandem through the middleware layer.
“Like plumbing, a business generally doesn't know that something is wrong with their systems until it's too late. It's critical for the integration layer to be visible in order to minimise the risk of losing critical documents and data.
“Taking short cuts in an integration project will result in the organisation being left with a spaghetti arrangement of systems where data is lost.”
According to global research firm Gartner, companies worldwide have spent more than $1.5 billion on integration. Gartner forecasts that companies will purchase and consume much more integration services in the next five years.
Gartner points out that more companies are considering outsourcing integration service providers.
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