Integrators – the invisible heroes of everyday life
We might stop to admire a beautiful website or the usability of a payment terminal. Simultaneously, there are millions of processes and an endless amount of information hidden underneath, which we seem to take for granted.
How do integrations show in our everyday lives, and who does run them?
When the COVID19 test results automatically move to healthcare databases and are then notified to a patient, it is all about integrations. When a supermarket cashier reads the barcode of a product, the display shows the product price. At the same time, there are numerous automatic processes taking place in the back-end systems, due to which the data will update the inventory, order backlogs, and sales forecasts.
When we switch on the coffeemaker or the lights in the morning, we only see a fraction of the process: Dozens of integrations ensure that electricity is at our use and that the electricity company can charge us accordingly.
In pretty much any digital or physical process, it is all about how data should move between different places fluently and reliably. This meaningful work is the responsibility of integrations, in other words, experts working with integrations: integration developers, business analysts, integration architects, and service and project managers.
Integrators are visionaries who can perceive the world through data flow and processes that run under the surface. They can create complex causal connections, build ecosystems, and make sure that millions of people can live their everyday lives in a well-functioning society.
They enjoy the versatile challenges that the needs of different industries and organizations provide. They enjoy the fruits of their labor after planning and implementing a solution that adds value to the customer organization. Whereas anyone can see the result, such as fresh bread on a store shelf, an integrator can draw a process chart of what had to happen to enable this event.
The world won’t run without integrations
Sometimes things taken for granted can better be comprehended with the help of a mind game. What would our world be like without integrations? When waking up in the morning, the lights would not be switched on as the information has not been transferred to the maintenance company, or the invoice has not been sent automatically. After having jumped into our cars, we are likely to hit a few bumps on the way as even the road infrastructure is an ecosystem heavily dependent on integrations.
When arriving at the grocery store, the doors will not open, and the shelves are empty of goods as the inventory turnover is based on numerous integrations. The salaries are unpaid, and even a great deal of the news remains unseen as integrations are used to collect news and translate them automatically to different languages.
And how do integrations affect the big picture if, for example, Finland’s security of supply was taken into consideration? The integrators shall ponder what might happen if our country was completely cut off from the Internet and all cloud platforms stopped working. Information should keep being transferred, and everything should function. Some could say that we have managed just fine manually in history. While that is true, it should be noted, that turning the digital processes back to the manual ones takes time.
Modern society is entirely dependent on the fluent flow of information. It is time to salute integrations – those invisible heroes of everyday life whose work enables a smooth life and work for the rest of us, even when we do not always acknowledge it. It is nearly impossible to come up with a matter that does not have anything to do with the work of integrators, do you agree?
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