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Integration challenges lead to digital deceleration
With precious little increase in their budgets and large numbers of applications to connect, IT decision-makers admit they are struggling
As the majority of organisations embrace digital business initiatives, IT decision-makers are struggling to introduce new applications, a study by Vanson Bourne has found.
On average, IT decision-makers are expected to deliver 32% more projects year over year, yet the majority said their budgets had increased by less than 10%. Only 36% reported that they were able to deliver all projects asked of them last year.
The survey of 650 IT decision-makers, carried out on behalf of application programming interface (API) management company MuleSoft, reported that the majority of IT decision-makers were finding it difficult to introduce new applications or technologies (59%) or make changes to existing applications (65%) because of their IT infrastructure.
More than half (53%) said they had 800 or more applications in use, while 43% counted 1,000 or more. According to MuleSoft, the percentage of applications that are connected or integrated has not increased since last year, remaining at 29%.
“Organisations are undergoing digital transformation to offer a completely connected customer experience,” said MuleSoft CEO Greg Schott. “This has put integration in the spotlight as a top-level business priority.”
Some 84% of respondents blamed integration challenges for slowing digital transformation progress, while a similar proportion (83%) reported that data silos were creating business challenges in their organisation.
Read more about API management and integration
- To gain the agility required of multicloud and mobile computing, enterprises will invest in agile API integration platforms, as well as event-driven integration.
- What user information do you pull in from APIs? Do you even know how well they perform? Dev teams should track these metrics to create and maintain smooth API communication.
Vanson Bourne reported that 92% of IT decision-makers surveyed said integration should span beyond IT to a wide range of business areas, the most common being business analysts (49%), data science (42%), application owners (38%), support (38%), human resources (37%) and marketing (36%).
Although 97% of those surveyed said their organisations were embarking on digital transformation initiatives, only 36% believed they provided a completely connected user experience across all channels.
According to MuleSoft, while customer experience is a central focus of 71% of digital initiatives, this disconnect draws into question the progress many organisations are making and whether they’re making the right investment decisions.
Steve Stone, technology advisor and former CIO of several Fortune 500 brands, said: “As organisations across all industries digitise their business models, the ability to connect and re-use technology assets becomes a critical capability.”
