The Core Value of Integration

There is a new Red Hat infographic that summarizes the benefits (and power) of integration. I am only using excerpts here because it is a large-ish infographic, and it's definitely worth viewing the whole thing. This is just a taste. (Even better, download the underlying whitepaper; it is very much worth reading.)

The headline-making numbers come down, not surprisingly, to cost-savings:

• 488% ROI in three years
• Payback in 8.2 months
• Over $1.4 million in annual savings

The most interesting thing that I saw is definitely part of that headline, but it's a smaller part of it -- over half ($838,800) of those annual savings come from making your IT staff more productive. When an application is integrated, it requires about 41% fewer staff to maintain it. There is a lot a variation here (defining integration is a whole 'nother blog post) but the idea of saving money, increasing individual productivity, and reducing the staff to maintain applications doesn't necessarily translate into cutting costs or reducing staff. The power of that, the core value of integration as I read it, is reallocating those precious resources to different operations for your company. Instead of keeping your current apps running, you could have a lot more available people and space to try to do new things, to reinvest in what your company does and move forward.

That's pretty cool.