Conquer the Digital Chaos

Today’s digital architecture is chaotic. After years of digital growth, many organizations are juggling multiple technology platforms to keep up with business growth. A recent global study shows that 80% of enterprises stated their diverse technology stacks delayed the launch of new products or services. This is also a struggle shared by many Hong Kong businesses, according to IT leaders in a recent CDOTrends Networking Luncheon organized in partnership with IBM.

“Bridging the old-world systems with the new-world applications can be a real struggle for many Hong Kong businesses,” said Kelvin Jor, the North Asia sales leader for webMethods and StreamSets at IBM. “This is particularly challenging when this integration needs to be real-time and secure.”

The digital chaos

Hong Kong is a mature technology market. With years of IT growth and digitalization, Jor said many are experiencing vendor sprawl. The combination of legacy and modern applications connected through complex APIs running on hybrid multi-clouds with siloed data sources creates digital chaos.

Adding to this complexity are the increasingly diverse operation geographies, regulatory requirements, and exploding digital applications driven by the rise of AI.

“As we move to the phase of AI, we expect one billion new applications by 2028 based on the research by IDC,” added Jigar Bhansali, the field chief technology officer for webMethods and StreamSets in Asia Pacific & Japan at IBM.

Bhansali added that digital chaos is more than a technical challenge; it’s an existential threat to business. The hidden cost of technological complexity is becoming increasingly apparent. According to the same study of 1,500 global IT leaders, 80% stated that fragmented technologies dramatically slow business growth and paralyze critical decision-making processes. Almost 90% of IT decision-makers also recorded severe service disruption. Businesses were unexpectedly forced to pause operations due to security breaches or overloaded applications that could not respond.

From chaos to clarity

Despite the impact on time-to-market, decision-making and service disruption, conquering digital chaos is easier said than done.

At the Networking Luncheon, Hong Kong IT leaders shared that the major challenges to enabling integration are data quality and consistency (67%), complex legacy system integration (50%), and managing multiple integration tools and platforms (44%).

To overcome these challenges, Bhansali suggested adopting a unified integration platform approach that streamlines all integration tools and unifies hybrid platforms.

He added that a unified integration platform allows businesses to consolidate different integration tools under a single platform, providing a unified experience of centralized control with distributed execution. This addresses the challenges of vendor sprawl, managing multiple integration tools, and complex systems integration requirements.

Nevertheless, Bhansali noted this unified approach does not have to rip and replace existing investments. “Don’t fall into the trap of a big bang replacement,” he said. “Instead, organizations can incrementally build a unified integration strategy, achieving quick wins along the way.”

Bridging the future integration with a unified platform

Aiming to help businesses achieve quick wins and, in the long term, develop a unified integration strategy, IBM has made different acquisitions, including webMethods and StreamSets, in recent years.

With these acquisitions, IBM is building a unified platform that allows enterprises to connect a wide range of on-premises and SaaS applications, facilitating seamless data flow and process automation.

“You need a technology partner that understands the complex landscape in the enterprise with a vision to innovate and grow with your business,” said Jor. “If you have different technology partners to support your integration, there will be gaps.”

Bhansali added that the IBM Hybrid Integration Platform offers more than 600 connectors for integrating SaaS, existing enterprise applications, and databases. The latest acquisition of webMethods and StreamSets includes technologies bridging heritage and mainframe systems with modern applications.

“Our platform is architected to connect any application–from SaaS, legacy apps, and system of records to OT applications and partner ecosystems,” he said. “The platform also allows you to centrally manage all integrations and deploy wherever the applications and data are — on the public cloud, private cloud or at your data center.”

Through a single pane of glass, businesses can monitor integration flows being executed and integration runtimes being deployed, allowing IT leaders to speed up troubleshooting and reduce disruption.

Empowering AI vision

Bhansali said as organizations adopt more AI applications, they are expected to face more complexity in integrating digital architecture.

At the live poll during the Networking Luncheon, more than half of IT leaders are exploring AI tools for their integration strategy. About 56% plan to use automation for API recommendations, discovery, and natural language integration design. Another popular application is using AI for intelligent mapping suggestions.

The IBM Hybrid Integration Platform simplifies integration, allowing business users and developers to create new workflows using an intuitive drag-and-drop user interface (UI) with AI-enhanced mapping or a natural language UI. This smart, no-code approach builds integrations faster and error-free.

“We aim to empower everyone to conquer integration chaos with automation to optimize workflows, reduce manual effort, and gain smarter insights for decision-making,” Bhansali concluded.

Image credit: iStockphoto/bo feng