The concept of pre-packaged integrations is nothing new. For years, integration vendors have tried to sell pre-packaged application integrations with various degrees of failure. You might presume that because of these failures, application integration cannot be pre-packaged and but you would be wrong.
Most of the failures were due to:
- Complexity of underlying integration platform used
The 1.0 integration products were (are) so complex and convoluted that trying to make changes costs the same as writing from scratch. So why pre-package if it's going to cost the same amount as starting from scratch.
- Over architecture of the solution on part of the developers
You see this over and over again. Developers with little customer implementation experience are charged with developing a pre-packaged integration solution. They start by trying to conceive every possible scenario at every customer. From there, there's no coming back. You build and build till you think you have every one covered. Only problem is that now you need a 30 day training course to understand all the moving parts.
- Combination of 1 and 2
Integrations can absolutely be pre-packaged. The question that needs to be answered is "To what extent?". The answer is going to depend on 1st the use case, 2nd the applications being integrated, and 3rd the experience of the developer.
Some use cases lend themselves to be 90-100% pre-packaged or "canned". For example, user synchronization. The objects are usually very well defined and tend not be customized per implementation.
Some use cases reach the 70-80% level. Customer master sync is good example. For the most part the customer objects on each side will be standard but you'll find various number of custom fields that need to be included. The integration platform should provide easy method for providing the additional required mappings.
You might argue that applications like SAP which provide infinite amounts of customization capability would be the exceptions to the case but that's not necessarily true. Generally, standard objects are only modified to include new custom fields.
Most use cases can be pre-packaged to at least 50%. The trick is not to over think or over build. Trying to conceive of every scenario and account for it will be impossible. As long as the underlying integration platform provides for easy modifications at implementation time, there's no need to over architect the solution. You can deal with the one-offs at implementation time.
Most use cases can be pre-packaged to at least 50%. The trick is not to over think or over build. Trying to conceive of every scenario and account for it will be impossible. As long as the underlying integration platform provides for easy modifications at implementation time, there's no need to over architect the solution. You can deal with the one-offs at implementation time.
