Eric Roch – Chief Strategist, IT Modernization & Integration

The API management software company 3scale has put together a free ebook (requires an email address) The API Owner’s Manual that including best practices from successful API teams. The book recommends using Alexander Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas to define the business case for API offerings. The Business Model Canvas defines a structured way to analyze […]

A recent Perficient post highlighted the need for an integration strategy and outlined the problems with legacy integration approaches and tools. This post offers an outline of the activities, topics for consideration and deliverables needed to create an integration strategy and roadmap. Without being too prescriptive in the approach to an integration strategy, it is […]

In the report CIO Call to Action: Shake Up Your Integration Strategy to Enable Digital Transformation Gartner says, “Most CIOs have yet to recognize that their traditional, established integration strategy cannot cope with digitization’s fast technology innovation and accelerated pace of business.” IT integration competency centers  (ICC) and the software they use grew out of […]

A strong approach to API development is one that is driven by business value and objectives and governed by reference architecture and standards. It is common for companies to develop sets of APIs for point projects only to find that after years of project-based development, they have hundreds of APIs built with little commonality and a great […]

With the shift towards hybrid cloud architecture and the exponential growth of mobile applications it is essential to establish an integration strategy that supports new computing models that include on-premises, cloud and mobility. Legacy middleware has a monolithic architecture, proprietary components, complex operating environments and expensive licensing. A dated integration style greatly slows mobile development […]

An analysis of the U.S. Federal Government (Fed) cloud strategy and implementation progress to date is an interesting exercise given the scale of the undertaking (the Fed’s IT budget peaked at $83B in 2013) the complexity of the requirements (e.g. securing classified information), the estimated size of the cloud spend (estimated between $1.4B and $7B […]

Perficient’s integration practice is over 15 years old so we have been through the rise of proprietary integration brokers, the hype cycle of SOA, and the hyper growth of APIs and the rising popularity of microservices. These approaches and technologies are related with the common goal of systems interoperability and share a common lineage and evolution […]

Billionaire venture investor and Twitter shareholder Chris Sacca recently wrote a much deliberated post and open letter to Twitter entitled What Twitter Can Be. His reason for writing this long letter was, “Twitter can be so much more than it is today.” An excerpt from his writings follows: Hundreds of millions of new users will […]

A recent UK study sponsored by Apigee found that a digital transformation should include mobile apps, APIs and data analytics. And that companies “investing in these core digital technologies are eight times more likely to increase revenue from digital activity, this is when compared to those who are only developing apps.” The report found that […]

Enterprise Architects learned long ago the benefits of describing architecture in different perspectives or views. John Zachman, gave us a structured way of viewing and defining an enterprise architecture in the 80s. But in many companies enterprise architecture (EA) has evolved to technologists that set architecture standards often without much insight into corporate objectives. The […]

We are living in what many are calling the age of the consumer. Companies today rely on their reputation and their customer’s experience to drive revenue. Customers expect real-time information such as product, pricing and availability via their mobile devices. Data quality issues equate to poor customer experiences. Consider the customer’s perspective if they show […]

Not surprisingly, surveys point to a need for a customer experience makeover. A poll by Econsultancy in association with Ensighten referenced in the article “Why Marketers, Agencies Haven’t Mastered the Customer Experience” lists the following benefits to customer experience optimization: Higher engagement and conversion rates (by far the highest ranked) Better brand perception and loyalty […]