Okay, I’m very sensitive about this because I wrote a book about this about 10 years ago, and still people miss the larger points, and are indeed making the same mistakes today. It’s almost like the 1980s are making a comeback, so much so I’m looking for the mullet haircuts. The fact is the rise of SaaS means that integration is a new issue with many smaller and more naive enterprises, and many are making poor decisions about integration.

Here we go again:

Say you need to connect your existing ERP systems up to your SaaS CRM system; both have well defined interfaces, either proprietary or Web services, for instance. While you can certainly pay a couple of guys for a couple of weeks to program the interaction with the interfaces, and the movement of the information from one system to another, and it may indeed work (at first), you’ll find the approach is fundamentally flawed. Why?

The core issue is that the volatility of the integration can not be addressed in a single domain, but they do it with code, at the point. Thus, as semantics change, interfaces change, systems are added and deleted, than it’s a reprogramming and testing job each an every time. Integration should be a configuration exercise, not a programming exercise, especially when considered in the context of a SOA.

The end result when you try to program to success is an ongoing maintenance programming exercise that ends up costing many times the cost of the first programming effort, thus why consulting firms like to sell integration programming. Moreover, lacking core integration tools such as transformation, routing, adapters, flow control, transactions, etc., means that your programming solution won’t be a complete solution, and thus not effective in the long term. In fact, could cost you more than money, such as customers that leave after you drop their orders 3 or 4 times due to bad integration.

So, just say no to programming. It’s always a dumb idea, and those consultants out there selling programming for integration should be ashamed of themselves, and the SaaS providers need to know better as well.

As for those that need integration, and consider programming as a viable solution, there should be some sort of intervention that needs to occur before they toss good money after bad, or worse, it cost them customers.