CIO Magazine Analysis Critical Evaluation of the CIO Magazine Article

The Whole . . . is More than its Parts

The article The Whole . . . is More than its Parts illustrates the complexities, challenges and decisions that must be made in order for an enterprise to unify its many applications, databases, systems and platforms to serve a common strategic purpose. The article was published May 31, 2000 when integration options within enterprises were comprised of creating hand-coded adapters and connectors which were often written within the companies who needed them, reliance on Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) or the use of XML as an integration standard. In 2000 when the article was written and published, Web Services were nascent and only in prototype form. Web Services began proliferating subsequent to the time when this article was written, given the rapid increases in programming languages and tools specifically designed for ensuring higher levels of real-time system and interprocess integration to the data schema and taxonomy level (Baghdadi, 2005). The intent of this article is to provide a critical assessment of the integration strategies enterprises have rely on, taking into account the critical success factors to long-term success of these initiatives and programs that are referenced in the article.

Critically Assessing Integration As Defined

One of the articles' most valuable points is that companies will often create a project management...

This approach to systems integration is critical because it provides the necessary senior management visibility and support, which is critical for any new initiative or program to succeed over time (Morabito, Themistocleous, Serrano, 2010). The article successfully defines how this specific strategy has drastically reduced the amount of confusion within companies implementing integration systems. The article however stops short of explaining how critical the project management office is in enabling change management to be effective within an enterprise. Often enterprise systems fail to be adopted and used within businesses due to a resistance to change and a lack of a well-defined and executed change management strategy (Morabito, Themistocleous, Serrano, 2010). This area of integration is not mentioned in the article and should have been quite frankly, as it would have provided a more realistic view of how difficult integration of systems is to translate into productivity and higher performance of any organization.
Second, the article defines dot coms and a lack of integration as the competing factors or the catalysts of change within these organizations discussed. In fact the lack of efficiency and the degradation of performance of core business processes, and the lack of continual process improvement is the far bigger cost factor dragging down profitability. Only in one instance is the cost reduction of…