Pradeep Chakraborty

It is well known to everyone that today's CIO is really under tremendous pressure to reduce IT spending and reduce deployment time. Hence, integration of IT assets holds the key to the success of any organization. This makes a CIO's job even more critical.

During the preparation of a special on this subject, we came across interesting observations. Some are mentioned here.

One, security of data is the most important issue. Next, there should be no restriction on integrated data, which should be integration's main intension. It actually means integrated data should be made useful to all employees within an enterprise or organization.

An interesting observation is the importance of compliance. Today, most large enterprises practice some sort of compliance, as without it, there would be no integration of IT assets, and of course, no standardization!

Infrastructure is the key and it must be upgraded constantly and continuously, along with the growth in business and corresponding changes in technologies. Once the infrastructure is integrated, it would be cost effective and easy when an enterprise decides to move up to the next level.

Services-oriented architecture (SOA) is the key, moving forward, as it allows Web-based single window for voice, video and data integration. Users will have a single front end to communicate irrespective of backend systems.

As for challenges in integrating IT assets, a major one could be making a legacy system communicate with a new system.

The goal of any enterprise information integration is to make data, applications and systems available to all employees across a distributed network, leveraging an organization's investments in technology, and allowing it to better use information to compete.

 CIOL Bureau