Are your system integrations secure, governed, and future-proof?

An integration assessment will help you form a reusable, innovative, and efficient integration function lowering your total implementation time while keeping your information exchanges secure and regulatory compliant.

With the digitalization journey, comes many challenges, one being how information should be integrated. Adopting new cloud-based services, often with built-in integration capabilities, makes it tempting to take shortcuts for information exchanges. This often introduces a fragmented and autonomous integration architecture leading to:

• Inadequate access control and incohesive information security.
• Point-to-point integrations bypassing integration function.
• Lack of governance for the integrations.
• Inadequate monitoring and reactive incident management.
• Inventing “the wheel” over and over again.

If you recognise any of these statements, you are starting to have big problems. With a fragmented integration architecture, it is very hard to know what information is shared, to whom it is shared, and when it is shared, and it increases your attack surface. This is not only of the company’s internal concern, as neglect of security is a breach of regulatory requirements such as GDPR.

Importance of a good integration function

Given this scenario it is vital to find an integration function that fits your organisation’s needs and requirements. A good integration function will help protect your information assets, centralise access control, govern your integrations, allow for innovation, and shorten the implementation and delivery time of the integrations. It is important that the integration function should be fit for purpose and bring value to the business.

Value of Integration assessment

The integration assessment will look at your organisation integration needs from a holistic view. It will have several benefits for your organisation and will give you the following insights:

An outside in perspective from a senior integration expert

The assessment is facilitated by a senior integration expert. Utilizing the experience and know-how from the expert will provide valuable insights on your current solution and give new perspectives and innovative suggestions on working solutions fitting your needs.

An updated view of your information processes

It will give you an updated view of your current and future information processes and data integration flows. This is important! Having the information as a starting point shifts the focus away from what you can technically do today, to what your organisation want and needs. This step also involves the desired level of innovation, if and how the information should be able to be combined into new value bringing assets.

A definition of information security and regulatory requirements

Having the information processes as a basis, the required level of information security and access management can be specified. It is important to have this under control as it not only protects the proprietary assets of your organisation, but also ensures you meet regulatory requirements.

Current governance and processes

Looking at your current way of working with integrations will give insight on your organisation’s level of maturity for governance and processes related to the integration function. This is important in many ways and have effect on the integration function’s resilience, security, efficiency, time to market, and maintainability.

A map of your current integrations

Finding all your current integrations will shine a new light on the actual integration architecture your organisation has. It is more a rule rather than an exception that shortcuts are being made bypassing the integration middleware. These integrations are often hard to govern, expensive to maintain, and might have security complications. Extending the map outside of the middleware will help your organisation mitigate security issues, improve governance, and lower cost.

Your current and future integration capabilities

Looking at your system’s integration capabilities will allow you to identify gaps between what you can do and what you want to do. This will help you in defining an integration architecture that is suitable and fit for purpose for your organisation.

Suggestions on an integration strategy, governance, and target architecture

The integration assessment will propose a strategy and solution that fulfils your needs, fits your budget, and works with your existing enterprise architecture, including a plan for governance and a high-level integration architecture. It will also provide suggestions on technology that is fit for purpose with regards to functionality and cost.

A roadmap and action plan to implement a target architecture

An action plan on how to get from your current state to your target functionality including cost estimates and time plan is an important deliverable, making the assessment a decision basis for your organisation’s management.

Walk through of the integration assessment process

The integration assessment is facilitated by a senior integration expert. The facilitator has extensive experience with system integration, deep knowledge of integration architectures, and know-how of creating and delivering integration functions.

First an overall scope is defined for the assessment. We define a common understanding on what areas should be covered and what deliverables are expected. The scope indicates time needed for the assessment as well as the commitment by your organisation.

A series of workshops and interviews are planned. For each event key stakeholders are identified and booked for participation. These interviews and workshops can be divided into five milestones:

1. Kick-off
   We define a more detailed scope giving all participants the same view of the assessment. The facilitator informs on working practices and establishes a network of contacts within your organisation.
2. State analysis
   Finding current processes, systems, integration capabilities, data flows, and ways of working (governance).
3. In-depth analysis and definition of target functionality and goals
   A more detailed analysis of systems, processes, and data flows is done on selected areas. In-depth interviews with key stakeholders are done where needed. A definition of strategy, target functionality, and goals are set with a technology agnostic viewpoint.
4. GAP Analysis and solution design
   GAP analysis between state and target. Design of a governance model and solution architecture. Identify possible candidates for the technical implementation of the integration function. Creation of a road map to reach the target architecture.
5. Presentation, action plan, estimates
   Develop an action plan to realize the road map. Calculate cost estimates. Present strategy, solution, conclusions, and findings.

Stakeholders from your organisation depends on the scope. Common roles needed for participation are: Management, Business and IT-architects, system owners, super users, and possibly key resources of your organisation’s customers.

Outcomes and conclusion

Having an efficient integration function is a key component to an organisation’s digitalisation. Properly implemented it will enable systems to be more independent and self-sustained, allowing them to focus on their core functionality. The entire enterprise architecture will be loosely coupled and flexible where systems can be interchanged. Also, information security and access control can be centrally managed and regulatory compliant. Performing an integration assessment will help your organisation to implement this function, fitting your business. It will give you insights on where you are today and how to achieve your goals in a cost-efficient manner.

On a high level, the deliverables of the assessment are:

• A plan to improve governance, availability, security, and insight of your information exchanges.
• Analysis of your current state and integration capabilities.
• Definition of your future strategy, needs, and goals.
• Gap analysis and roadmap to realize the target strategy.
• Proposed integration function including governance and high-level architecture.
• Detailed solution proposal including governance, technology(ies), integration architecture, and services.
• Detailed action plan on how to get from your current state to your target functionality including cost estimates and time plan.

An integration assessment is an efficient way for your organisation to have access to a specialised expert on system integration to gain valuable insights of your integration function from an outside perspective.
We at Tietoevry Create would love to tell you more about this service. Don’t hesitate to contact us for more information. We will help make your integrations secure, governed, and future-proof.