Interoperability Key To Business Process Optimisation

More than two decades ago, interoperability was enforced only at the operational level. But experts feel the concept can now be applied at the developer and process level as well. From the perspective of the CIO, interoperability reduces cost of support and required skill sets, thereby reducing the cost of solutions in the long run.

Interoperability ensures that all systems communicate with each other, allowing an organisation to scale up easily. It is estimated that about 85% of e-governance projects fail due to the absence of interoperability.

Heterogeneous environments demand interoperability

Several organisations have deployed heterogeneous environments, i.e. both proprietary and open source. With diverse systems, applications and data in the IT ecosystem, and the increasing need to integrate business processes, CIOs today are evaluating various options to reduce the risk and uncertainty associated with the deployment of disparate systems, and to identify and avoid operational constraints. Increasing dependence on interoperability has become inevitable in the heterogeneous IT infrastructure of today.

Interoperability saves cost

In the absence of interoperable systems, companies would need significant investment in middleware/API to ensure that two systems talk to each other. Also, during implementation, since no explicit standards exist, many would pursue legacy approaches, where any extension or upgrade may prove costly and unwieldy. With definitive interoperability standards, companies can reduce such unwarranted costs.

Interoperability brings data, people and process together

In India, Microsoft, Novell, Adobe, and HP are vendors with a strong commitment to interoperability. Microsoft’s recent collaborative agreement with Novell is an industry-first effort to bring together proprietary and open source platforms. Microsoft also set up an interoperability lab in Hyderabad.

Speaking at the Microsoft Interoperability Conclave recently in Bangalore, Nandan Nilekani, COO, MD and president, Infosys Technologies, said, “We as enterprises have to gain customer loyalty through innovation. Better utility of resources is one of the key factors, and the cost has to fuel business growth. Integration and operation costs can be brought down by an interoperable infrastructure. Interoperability is important to bring data, people and process together.”

Guiding points for IT heads

According to experts, interoperability can be achieved by any CTO through product engineering, industry/community partnership, access to technology and IP, and implementation of standards in their organisation.

Radhesh Balakrishnan, director - Platform Strategy, Microsoft India, says, “The fundamental factors to be kept in mind by any IT head while planning interoperability are maintaining technology neutrality as much as possible, and choosing best-of-breed solutions that have inbuilt interoperability. The supplier or provider must produce and discuss an interoperability roadmap for the organisation. The vendor should be chosen very consciously and smartly. The cost of ownership has to be checked. Thus, both supplier and customer need to discuss and plan interoperability right from the first step.”

A CIO can attain interoperability by focusing on aspects that include technical and operational interoperability. Technical interoperability refers to standards and profiles; it involves explicitness of standards/profiles, maturity and coverage (devices/profiles), sufficiency and documentation. Operational interoperability refers to the number of products available to support the standards, variety of features within standards and product support.

According to Dr. T.R. Madan Mohan, Director, Consulting, Information Communication and Technology Practice, Frost & Sullivan, India, “Enterprise interoperability is a multi-stage process and CIO/CTOs should first evaluate the as-is and where-to stage.”

As a first step, IT heads should choose environments that have an explicit standard and support path that reduces the uncertainty of technology development. A standard that has more support in terms of applications, investments and resources, signals a formal definitive approach to interoperability management. From a CIO perspective, these are very crucial, as deploying such systems would inherently reduce organisational risk and IT uncertainty.