for J. William Bennett

William Wrigley, Jr. (1861-1932) once said "When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary."  Without experiential deliberation there can be no change. Without change there can be no progress.  Doing something "the way its always been done" or finding no fault in a faulty process, is as common today as it was in Wrigley's day. Not addressing such issues can render your business unnecessary.

Professional Experiential  Portfolio

for

J. William Bennett

Webster's dictionary defines 'Integrate' as coming from the Latin integratus, "past participle of integrare, - to form, coordinate, or blend into a functioning or unified whole".  It continues to define an 'Integrator' as a noun "one that integrates; especially : a device or computer unit that totalizes variable quantities in a manner comparable to mathematical integration"^[1].  So according to Webster I'm a computer. Quite a nice accolade I thought.

The IT consulting profession must invent a new term, function or service every couple of years.  That's a law written somewhere I'm sure.  Since Moore's Law is already taken, we'll call it Bennett's Law of service marketing.

Many of the key terms in this web site such as solutions engineering and enterprise architecture, were not used 10 years ago. 'Integrator" is a relatively new description for body shop type consultancies that provide staff augmentation based on subject matter experts (SME).  This service is as old as IT itself.  Actually, Information Technology and IT are terms less than 15 years old.  It was Computer Technology before the wide area network (WAN) and Internet complicated the life of the Computer Technology SME to the point that higher level 'specialist' designations were deemed necessary.

In IT jargon, the Integrator is simply an implementer.  Whether ERP systems, JIT systems or ROI studies, there is an Integrator for every TLA [three letter acronym] in this business. 

I have probably more integration management experience than product specific SME experience.  I do not consider myself a PeopleSoft or SAP guru, but I have managed projects that implemented them.  I do not call myself an expert on many solution models, such as JIT manufacturing or CRM systems.  However, I know what they can do and what they can't.  I know what business solutions can come from these implementations and how the cost-benefit metrics can me calculated.  Few 'integrators' have that kind of experience.

In my extensive consolidation experience I have had to integrate many commercial and customized solutions into a foreign infrastructure.  Integration experience includes the following clients and companies:

1. GTE Data Services - Ucell-7 automation integration [1978]
2. InterFirst Bank - Customized change management and consolidated application integration [1982]
3. JOBTRAC Software system implementations and integration to OEM automation products - 30 customers [1984-1990]
4. Sysco Corporation - AS/400 Chain Stores integration to VSE systems in 23 states [1991-1993]
5. KPMG Peat Marwick - ROI and Feasibility benchmarks of integrated systems - 6 clients [1993-1995]
6. BGI Professional Services - Consolidation of entire data centers - 4 clients [1995-2003]
7. BGI Professional Services - Developed an integrated client/server to mainframe system for server based automation [2000-2003] for a commercial software firm.
8. Psyclone Systems - WiFi integration into LANs and DHS Enterprise Architecture integration with implementation plan. [2004]
9. Globallink Trade Consulting - Web Services, WSDL, SOAP, UDDI, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) architecture and design [2005].
10. Present - Web content and design [www.lighthouse-infoservices.com].

References and artifacts pertaining to many of these engagements are available on the Artifact page.

Today (circa 2006) integration services goes way beyond developing interfaces and customizing COTS systems.  The state of IT evolution is so advanced that no one person can provided all the answers.  Now days you are an extremely valuable commodity if you can simply evaluate the possibilities. 

Currently, there are over 100,000 software titles available for the enterprise server environment (Unix, Wintel & Linux). The biggest new market on the horizon is the Application Service Provider (ASP) and their exploitation of global SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) constructs.  This promises to completely revolutionize IT once more.  Allowing outsourcing of selected IT functions, applications and/or systems. It's going to get a lot more complex and any organization that is not poised to change will have problems.

References:

^[1] Merriam-Webster Online, 2004 Retrieved from http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=integrates, December 21, 2004.

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