Systems integration
Systems integration is connecting separate business systems so they exchange data directly, instead of a person exporting from one and importing into another.
Also written: system integrationArabic: تكامل الأنظمة
Why it matters more than it sounds
Most businesses do not have a missing system. They have five systems that do not speak, and staff filling the gaps by hand. Integration removes the re-entry, and with it the delay and the transcription errors that come free with re-entry.
What it has to handle
The interesting part is not the happy path. It is what happens when the other system is down, when a record arrives twice, when a field is missing, and how anyone finds out. An integration without a defined failure path is a future outage nobody will be able to explain.
Point-to-point versus a layer
Connecting each system to each other system works until there are more than a few — then the connections outnumber the systems and every change touches several. A middle layer costs more at the start and stops that.
Related terms
Questions people ask
Not always. Two or three connections can be direct. It is worth a layer once connections outnumber systems, or once you need one place to see what ran and what failed.
Changes at the other end, usually — a renamed field or a new required value. Integrations need monitoring for the same reason anything with an external dependency does.
Related serviceAutomation & integrations