What is Applications Integration? Understanding the Perspectives of Managers, IT Professionals, and End Users

While organizations, collectively, spend billions of dollars to achieve “integration,” little is known about practitioners’ perceptions of integration that influence these decisions and actions. This paper describes a qualitative research study to surface practitioner interpretations (assumptions, knowledge and expectations) of applications integration. Evidence from interviews of 51 practitioners representing three stakeholder groups – managers, IT professionals, and end users – revealed 15 major themes related to practitioner perspectives of the characteristics, benefits and downsides of applications integration. The findings indicate that there is no generally accepted definition of what applications integration is or ought to be, and that there are significant differences among the stakeholder groups regarding the potential benefits and downsides of applications integration.