In a previous blogpost we have highlighted why Interface Management for Enterprise Integration is so important: The WHAT, WHY and VALUE of Interface Management.
It contains many aspects (such as transparency, quality, documentation, reporting, checks following automation paradigms) and working on them makes you a part of INTEGRATION EXCELLENCE, a mindset that understands the importance of enterprise integration and the constant strive to make the way you run your A2A, B2B and B2C communication the best possible version of your industry.
Now, what are the options?
- Do not care and do nothing. This is something you can afford when the complexity is very low and you do not have to manage many interfaces and those are not so important.
- Manual activities: Create an inventory in Excel or in a different tool, document your integrations in Word or in a tool, check the traffic/quality/performance periodically or outsource this. This will result in documents which are never up-to-date and nobody will enjoy the process of maintaining them.
- Build a tool: Develop an automated inventory and documentation solution in-house which supports the Build (development process), Operations as well as Planning and Execution of your integration strategy. This is great when you have the knowledge, the time and the budget for such internal projects. However be aware that those developments are often built by individuals who can leave the company and also need to have continuous budget to maintain and optimize the solution over time.
- Buy a tool: Get a subscription to the Integration Cockpit, our Interface Management solution to centrally manage your integration landscape through automation to discover interfaces, standardize, harmonize and enrich them, generate a documentation, show reports and execute checks on quality, traffic and performance to increase transparency as well as quality and stability. Of course you have to see, if the applied concepts fit to your organization, we are happy to have a conversation about this.
Last words: Options 1 & 2 are not realistic and quite stupid if you have reached a certain integration complexity. So the question in the end is MAKE (option 3) or BUY (option 4).
