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BUSINESS AGILITY SUFFERS AS BUSINESS INTEGRATION BACKLOG MOUNTS: INTERSYSTEMS AUSTRALIAN SURVEY
Business integration projects increasingly deliver target ROI but run late; Cost still a barrier to strategic integration projects
Sydney, Australia – February 2, 2006 – Most (53%) organisations suffered reduced business agility through not being able to fulfil business integration requests within the timeframe required by the business, according to a new Australian survey undertaken by InterSystems Corporation.
The InterSystems Australian Integration Survey 2005/06 found that organisations’ performance in meeting business integration requests worsened for the second year running, with over two-thirds (68%) meeting fewer than 40% of requests in time. Last year the figure was 57%.
The survey also found that business integration is consuming an average of 24% of new IT project budgets, representing a considerable overhead for the business.
Seeking to better understand customer needs for business integration, InterSystems conducted its third annual, in-depth survey of 100 CIOs and IT Managers at 84 organisations. The complete survey findings and methodology are contained in a full report, available at: http://www.intersystems.com.au/IntegrationSurveyReport.
“The inability to meet business integration requests in time is a real drag on business agility,” said Denis Tebbutt, Managing Director of InterSystems in Australia. “Organisations also reported loss of efficiency to service clients, delayed business initiatives and loss of competitive advantage.”
“The really bad news is that the business integration backlog is getting worse, despite integration projects increasingly delivering target ROI and higher satisfaction with available business integration technologies,” said Tebbutt. “As CIOs become better at business integration, integration requests increase in number and complexity, resulting in a growing backlog.”
InterSystems also sought to gauge the value to the business of packaged software applications that are “integration-ready” – with built-in capabilities to easily integrate information with other applications. A clear majority of respondents (59%) said integration-ready applications would increase their organisation’s business agility.
Other key findings of the InterSystems Australian Integration Survey 2005/06 were that:
- The number one driver for business integration was ‘Improving ROI on existing IT applications’ (51% of organisations); number two was ‘Web initiatives’ (39%).
- In the last year, business integration projects improved in delivering target ROI
(67% of projects this year vs. 54% last year), but more business integration projects ran late
(57% this year vs. 51% last year).
- 67% of organisations had integration projects that would be strategic to the business yet have not been undertaken because the required software and/or services costs are too great.
“With many strategic projects currently on ice, the business integration backlog organisations are grappling with now may only be the tip of the iceberg,” said Tebbutt. “Ultimately, organisations will have to embrace better, more innovative ways of managing and integrating data in the business. Otherwise, it won’t just be their business agility that suffers, but the business itself.”
About InterSystems
InterSystems Corporation is a privately-held US$200,000,000 company with headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. and offices in 22 countries. InterSystems CACHÉ® is a high performance object database that makes applications faster and more scalable. InterSystems Ensemble® is a rapid integration platform that enriches applications with new functionality, and makes them connectable. InterSystems HealthShare™ is a platform that leverages existing healthcare applications to rapidly create regional or national electronic health records.
InterSystems is the predominant vendor of database and integration software for healthcare applications. CACHÉ and Ensemble are used as the core technology for clinical applications in thousands of hospitals around the world, including all U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and U.S. Department of Defense hospitals, and the Kaiser Permanente network. Leading software vendors who build clinical application products with InterSystems' technologies include Epic Systems, GE Healthcare, Misys Healthcare, QuadraMed, and many more. For more information, visit InterSystems.com.
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Editorial Contact
Chris Bowes
Bowes Communications
(02) 9387 2332
Chris.Bowes@BowesPR.com
