Interface vs. Integration: It's been an ongoing issue in the information systems world and, for me personally, it came to a head in March of 2000. I had just joined a floundering system implementation at a very large hospital and one of the first things the project manager threw at me, literally - we were not great friends, was a Visio diagram of the proposed interface solution. There were over 30 different interfaces displayed on 1 sheet of paper. There were at least 6 different security systems that required an interface to the main business system (active employees, badge number, etc.). Wow, what a ball of spaghetti. My first move was to sit down with the Technical lead and try to get an idea of required and wish-list. He looked at the diagram in disgust and sent me over to the lead system analyst. Unbeknown to me, he had a purpose in mind. I met the lead and we started talking about 3 of the interfaces for which he was responsible. When I went into how we could use the functionality of the new system to perform the requirements of two of the interfaces he became agitated. We were in the process of ripping out 1/2 of the interface and he could not understand the need to re-examine the use case. "Interfaces are what we do," he informed me when I pressed him about why these interfaces would be necessary in the future. This is one problem with interfaces: They have an inherent conflict of interest. The IT Department, of some not all companies, has the notion that interfaces exist for the purpose of long term employment. I'm not kidding. Once we got rid of the 3 interfaces the lead based his career on, he stopped talking to everyone and eventually took a job over at the hospital. The other problem with interfaces, the main problem, is that they are not integration. One customer table that is accessed and used by all business functions from Sales to Support to AR and Collections is always superior by orders of magnitude over two customer tables that must communicate by way of cryptic messaging and interpretation - otherwise known as an interface. However, in the marketplace today one still hears regularly the confusion of an interface solution and an integrated solution. IT professionals convince business people that they have integrated their systems through the interface they wrote for the CRM package to the Accounting package. This is misleading at best, and just plain dishonest at worst. Here's a simple test for business people. When you hear integration ask how many tables of the main entity - customers, employees, orders - will exist when the work is done. Sure there are times when interfaces are necessary, but when you receive a 2 or 3 or 4 to the question above I would call in the IT Manager and ask for a list and explanation of all alternatives. You might be surprised that there are several more options than you know. | 
