Business integration concepts and practices

¶ … Business Integration Journal Web site: (http://www.bijonline.com/Index.cfm?section=home)

Summary Description

The website for Business Integration Journal is primarily designed to assist it Directors and CIOs with the many decisions required in the integrating of systems in support of business strategies. The site heavily focused on fresh content in the areas of how business processes can be supported through it strategies, how technologies can also be used to support customer-facing service strategies including CRM, and also includes in-depth analysis of solutions through the delivery of white papers.

The site is designed to be a comprehensive resource for any it or line-of-business manager interested in staying current on the specifics of system integration.

Overall Look and Feel and Apparent Target Audience

Designed for ease of navigation yet the presentation of in-depth content, the site is specifically designed to appeal to its main target audience, the it Directors and CIO. The extensive use of frames for example gives the publication an opportunity to show its current issue, featured white papers, online exclusives, tech stats as created by industry analyses, and a series of industry news and industry events links. In addition there is navigation across the top of the screen to allow for multiple paths to information.

What the site does and does not give you

Business Integration Journal does deliver significant amounts of in-depth content and guidance for its it Director and CIO-level readership. In addition the site has 18 different categories of articles included on the site, and a series of selections by category within a secondary and third level of the site. The site also delivers the current edition of the Journal electronically to anyone clicking on the icon of the current editions' front cover.

The site however does not provide much in the way of relating it integration strategies to broader strategic frameworks. There is little coverage for example of how Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) would relate back to the specific strategic frameworks a company may be working with. The concept of broader strategic initiatives being supported by SOA however is present.

Why the site will or will not be used as part of a professional resources list

This site will definitely be on many professional resource lists as the content is of high quality, its updated fairly frequently, and it's free. The site also has many useful content feeds including a ZDNet blog feed on the front page for industry statistics.

Reasons to return back to the site

Excellent content and coverage of the most critical areas of it integration today, namely the use of SOAs to further support business processes and ensure higher levels of productivity and growth are two primary reasons for returning to the site. In addition the extensive use of PDFs on the site for delivering content makes the site ideal for getting articles and using them as references during class discussions.

What information was expected to be found and was not there is surprisingly little said about compliance on this site, specifically relating to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002) and the role of pricing on managing channels. Columbus (2003) has specifically focused on this areas as well, with special pricing requests increasingly being used as a competitive advantage in many industries. The role of compliance as it relates to manufacturing is not seen, which would have been included in sites with SOA coverage in greater detail.

Links from the site that are helpful

The majority of internally-pointed navigation links are all very well done, as are the links to other publications from TCI Publications. There are not that many third-party sites linked to in this specific site; they are all cross-referencing other sites in the publisher's set of magazines and journals. All links worked and had very good content.