The State of Integration

A Delphi Group report explores how companies use and plan to use their integrated information management technologies

After examining more than 800 organizations' integrated information management deployments and planned spending, a new study from the Delphi group concludes that content management and Web services are the most talked about and planned solutions for businesses trying to integrate their enterprise. Portals are no longer the goal, and companies have become a little less "Microsoft-centric" in their deployments. They're instead shifting to Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) and open source options, according to report authors John Hughes, Delphi senior analyst, and Nathaniel Palmer, Delphi chief analyst.

"Two epicenters or points of convergence have emerged from the study findings. The first is around content. A large number of firms see content as a top priority and indicate spending plans around content-related initiatives. In this context, content management is seen to trump portal deployments, whereas comparable studies in the past have put a great priority on portal software," says Hughes.

He adds, "The second epicenter is around standards-based integration, notably Web services. We have seen a notable up-tick in mention of planned Web services deployment, however, given the nascent state of this space we are still validating the likelihood of these deployments."

Hughes and Palmer believe the prominence of Web services is one of the most important findings in the study. According to them, many companies have made Web services part of their future deployments, especially those companies in industries that tend to spend a lot on technology, such as finance, government, and telecommunications.

"Web services is the consistent front runner when we looked at which constituent technologies were to be deployed by those firms with existing portal, search, BPM or content management solutions," says Hughes.

The report, "The Coming Convergence: New Realities for the Integrated Enterprise," looks at organizations of all sizes and specifically questioned them on their plans for their knowledge, content, and process management solutions. The report predicts that spending on these technologies will increase in the next couple of years. However, Hughes notes that this may not be the case for suite purchases.

"Suite packaging is putting downward pressure on prices and, in general, is suppressing market maturation. We see anecdotal evidence favoring solution-buying patterns over suites. The role that suite offerings play in spending is often to delay sales cycles by introducing lower-cost but incomplete alternatives, such as best-of-breed/pure-play offerings. We have seen this previously in several markets, and are seeing this now in the portal, content management, and business process management segments," says Hughes.

Finally, the report uncovers another area of future opportunity: process technologies. According to Hughes, there is "a growing interest in process technologies and we believe that an emerging opportunity exists for process infrastructure outside of the stack and application suites."

— Jeanette Perez

Jeanette Perez left the editorial staff of Intelligent Enterprise to pursue a master's degree from Columbia University. She is now a freelance writer based in New York City.

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