Enterprises across the globe have started to realize that hybrid IT integration cannot be an afterthought anymore. Gartner confirms that 40% of the organizations will deploy solutions for bringing the cloud and on-premise applications into a single component by the end of 2018. However, blindly making a shift towards a Hybrid IT architecture can lead to duplication of services, skill gap, and increase in maintenance and cost overheads. The hybrid IT integration network must be built with a planned systematic, and focused approach. Here we present a checklist that can help organizations in accessing greater benefits from their hybrid integration model.
6 Point Checklist for Hybrid IT Integration
- 1.Plan Where to Host Your Integration Tools: Organizations must plan and decide where to host the hybrid integration tools to comprehensively cover the IT surface area. Locations of ERP, CRM systems and System of Records (SOR) must be considered for deciding the strategic position. Hosting integration tools within the proximity of application and data warehouse avoids connectivity issues and network breakdowns. The plan must include ways to expand application networks for covering the future integration needs. Enterprises face real-time IT issues when they have a host of on-premise applications but they adapt cloud-based technologies. Those organizations should have a cloud-based hosted service to quickly build integrations and real-time connectivity between applications.
- 2.Decide on Authorization & Access Management: Capabilities for authorization and access management from a centralized interface provides efficiency advantages in the long run. The advantage delivers full control over the IT architecture. Organizations should place controls for configuration management in the Hybrid IT integration architecture to enable business teams and swiftly responding to authorization management requirements.
- 3.Analyze Who is Going be the End User: An emerging trend in hybrid integration is citizen integration. Enterprises are decentralizing the integration-related responsibilities between IT and business users. This capability enables teams in keeping up with project demands by using few resources. Organizations must ensure that an integration tool offers broad integration capabilities in simple steps.
For driving innovation and productivity, enterprises must focus on extending the surface area to non-technical users as well. Gartner recommends simple integration capabilities for effective IT governance. Business leaders can enable dynamic digital services and governance policies by leveraging simple integration capabilities. - 4.Consider Growing Line of Business Needs: To build a competitive edge in the cloud computing era, business leaders must ensure that their integration framework will accommodate future integration needs as well. Reusability is one such capability which organizations must look for in their hybrid integration frameworks. This feature ensures that services, mappings, and orchestrations can be used over and again.
- 5.Provide Bi-modal Integration Modes: Every integration project has distinct requirements. Experts suggest enterprises to deploy a bi-modal integration scenario which provides supports to all kinds of mission-critical development projects. A bi-modal approach can accommodate traditional as well as emerging integration needs of an organization.
- 6.Ensure Data Governance: Organizational data often becomes vulnerable to integration projects. That’s why organizations should have proper knowledge about their Systems of Records (SOR). With proper triggers for data management and access controls, organizations can significantly mitigate risks to data quality.
Following this checklist can help organization in future-proofing their hybrid investment from threats and vulnerabilities. Download this Whitepaper to know about these points in detail.
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