Systems Integration is often viewed as the mythical Medusa whose multiple snake heads caused many a nightmare. As businesses grow (and merge ! ) however, many are facing the task of pulling together information from disparate systems in the enterprise.

Information processing in a business can frequently be characterized as a number of independent "islands", each churning through its own data and producing results customized for a given user or department. The goal of SI is to meld the useful output from such information streams into a single coheret and widely available node.

Experience has repeatedly demonstrated that writing individual interfaces which allow pairs of applications to speak to each other rapidly leads to unmanageable and needlessly complex layers of bindery. The current thinking is to create a single point of connection for all legacy processes. That new node can then provide integrated information flow to new applications, typically over the Inter/IntraNet.

While the arrival of XML makes information exchange across many different processes much easier and less expensive to implement, in general the cost and frustration level of integration projects is quite high.

The articles offered here discuss in some depth the issues involved in integration efforts, as well as the technology and vendors now available for the task.