What does System Integration look like in the NEW?

As businesses go digital, cloud and automation platforms (including AI) are expected to show direct business outcome through cost reduction and process efficiency. Generating business value using these new-age technologies requires an understanding of end-to-end System Integration (SI); of integrating existing systems with digital capabilities.

Organisations need new skills to manage this shifting paradigm; Knowledge in Data on cloud, design thinking, Agile, Devops augmented by business or functional expertise is becoming key for effective SI. These skills also give birth to new roles which exist at that very difficult intersection of business and technology e.g. enterprise architects, design thinking coaches, scrum masters.

Design thinking coaches are a perfect example of the shift; what used to be an assessment and requirements- driven approach to building new solutions is now a more open-ended, data and hypothesis driven approach.

Also, anyone who has tried to integrate machine learning or AI into an existing process with traditional SDLC methodologies would have seen how far that has gone. We are increasingly moving from skilled coding and manual deployment to an iterative component assembly and highly automated deployments “new” way of doing things.A forward-looking SI approach needs to combine new methodologies (lean delivery, design thinking, agile) with new role definitions (such as release managers, change specialists and design thinking coaches) and finally leverage new platforms and technologies (cloud, in-memory, IOT, machine learning) to deliver the business outcomes expected.

Would like to thank Divya Ganjoo, Kushal Dalal and Aravind Krishnan for their inputs.