IT Integration at the heart of digital strategies

The expansion of IT landscapes of enterprises led to an exponential growth in endpoints that need to be connected. The ability to integrate IT systems to work together seamlessly across multiple functions of the business has become key to the success of every enterprise. Operating in an integrated, connected way leads to fast, efficient, and sustainable business outcomes.

IT is no longer just about keeping the lights on and keeping the network running. The role of IT is no longer about delivering projects for the business. It needs to be an enabler to the business to achieve more digital independence. Modern IT organizations need to be intentional about how to digitally enable the workforce and at the same time protect their digital assets.

How can an IT executive shift that mindset from project-to-project delivery inside the organization to opening up the assets and capabilities of the organization? Deloitte Digital Integration captures the answer to this question in a few key topics.

A platform thinking approach for acceleration

Platform thinking caters to the question: “How to enable more people to create value on top of existing building blocks, while maintaining control and governance?”. The way that would look for an integration landscape is as follows: current IT delivery capacity needs to be focused on producing reusable assets and enabling the rest of the organization to leverage these. To allow more people to create value and innovate through discoverability and self-service. This is the new operating model. Break away from silo’s and build more of a product centric mindset around integration.

The modern API

APIs, or Application Programming Interfaces, form the products that become the reusable building blocks within an integration platform. These reusable APIs are built in a consistent and standardized way, so users can easily and quickly assemble them to achieve their desired project result. Just like a true product, an API should be built from a consumer need perspective. Then like a true product, it will need design, marketing, sales, a nicely designed package to wrap it, distribution channels, user guides, and more. Consumers pick up these products and create value with it or on top of it. After that, the product might get feedback from the consumers, which the provider should use to iterate on improving the product.

API-Led Connectivity

In a modern world everything is digital, and everything will connect. API-led connectivity is an approach to organizing your business from a technology point of view. Connectivity is no longer about just integrating back-office systems. It is about unlocking the value of the data and assets of the organization and allow the business to participate in creating the new digital experiences to meet their customers’ needs. API-led connectivity model takes a three-layered approach with a System layer, Process layer and Experience layer. These layers open up data, model processes, orchestrate and augment data and help you define innovative customer experiences. This allows organizations to take on an integration approach based on decentralized access and value creation of the business.

Technology

An integration platform manages the diversity and heterogeneity of application ecosystems within an organization. Not only does it serve the technical purposes related to protocols, message formats and security, but also functional needs such as API management, access, and identities. It allows for an incremental and design-first API development approach, overcoming data silos through abstraction and reuse.

API Strategy

Implementing an effective API strategy entails close alignment with the digital and corporate strategy of your organization. The strategic position of integration within the organization, the integration approach, the ownership of the APIs, the API governance, the enablement of the organization and the technology are all important aspects when defining the API strategy. The strategy enables organizations to streamline their IT integration to align IT outcomes with business goals.