System integration is about designing, building or adjusting your company's IT or business process systems to ensure that there's a cohesive approach to information across diverse components or equipment from multiple vendors.

Integration generally means combining parts so that they work together or form a whole. In IT, this can mean bringing different manufacturers' products together into a single system.

Why do we need it?
During the 80's, the dawning of the age of business computer systems, technology grew in great leaps and bounds with little concern for how it was all going to work together. Mainframes, minicomputers and eventually the PC had different operating systems, as did the networks that connected them.

As the 90s shifted the focus to connectivity, network operating systems became more complex but meant a greater range of hardware and software could co-operate on the same network. Now as we enter the age of interconnected enterprises internal systems are expected to interact across departments and branches as well as with the systems of partners in the supply chain.

That's where systems integration or the services offered by a systems integrator become invaluable. If in-house IT resources are already stretched, this is a function that can be outsourced to a consulting company with IT analysis and software customizing skills.

Who should consider system integration?
If your organization has grown in a piecemeal way with different departments responsible for their own IT development and are considering ways to improve efficiency and get into business-to-business electronic commerce then you need to think seriously about systems integration.

If different departments' systems are connected to each other, each department can get a much better view of how to sell to and service the customer.

Systems integration ensures that organizations can begin to operate more holistically, with systems working together to build a corporate memory and much deeper relationships with customers and business partners. Getting the old and new systems working together opens the way for greater co-operation, speedier access to data and a much better grasp of resources.