Mangham also cites integration challenges with customer relationship management (CRM) and business intelligence (BI).

“We have a customer access strategy which is driving towards putting a lot of systems onto our CRM system, so we have a unified way of dealing with customers, and integrating those back-office systems is going to become a major challenge,” he says. “The other big challenge on our radar is BI, which is currently handled in silos across the organisation and needs to be integrated so that we can perform cross-analysis on data to drive improvements and efficiencies.”

One of the key problems in terms of skills is likely to be in developing interfaces to some of the council’s bigger, proprietary systems, such as for housing management and environmental services.

“What we don’t know is whether the suppliers will supply those kinds of skills at a rate we can afford or whether we’re going to have the skills in-house to get round it,” says Mangham. “In terms of pulling things into a BI system or writing a piece of middleware, I’m pretty sure we can get hold of those skills.”

For other integration projects, such as its Alfresco document management software and Applause web content management system, the council has used open source platforms and technologies. Mangham says Camden already has quite a bit of experience of open source.

“It gives you a greater level of flexibility in terms of how you manage and continue the development of a project,” he says. “We only have four dedicated developers here, which is not big considering the range of things we’re responsible for. As a consequence, we’ve tended to specialise in higher-end skills, such as design and project management, and offshored a lot of the development. With open source platforms, you have that option.”

As a London borough, Camden also has the problem of facing competition for skills with some of the high-paying private sector firms in the City. Mangham says the only solution is training people in the skills the council needs, such as integration architects.

“Our experience is generally if you employ people who are interested in developing skills and you provide them with the opportunities to put such skills into practice, you can probably hang on to them longer than you might expect,” he says. “Inevitably, once they reach a certain level we can’t compete with the salaries in the Square Mile, but we have a pretty good track record of hanging onto them for three to five years.”

One way to maximise your potential to anticipate and meet any future demand for integration skills is to do more work upfront, says Lustratus’s Craggs.

“A lot of customers require considerable help before they go down the integration route, in terms of understanding what it means, how they are going to benefit from it, and in understanding at a fundamental level how their business actually operates today,” he says.

Next week: The final part of Computing’s definitive guide to integration

Integration skills in most demand

Architecture experts
Analysts and IT directors agree that the number one integration skills challenge for organisations over the next three years will be finding people who can understand both the requirements of the business and how various technologies can fit together to meet those needs. The only answer may be to train the system architects yourself, although retaining them may prove difficult in such a competitive market.

Operational integration specialists
There will also be a shortfall of people who understand the operational implications of integration – individuals who are skilled in areas such as performance tuning and problem resolution. “When you integrate systems in a service-oriented architecture (SOA), things operate asynchronously as opposed to synchronously,” says Steve Craggs, director of Lustratus Research. “Therefore, finding skills such as
tuning and problem determination becomes more challenging, since most programmers today like to work
in straight lines.”

Governance skills
Because integration means a business operation could spread across many environments, you have to be careful to retain an appropriate level of control. “This means many organisations will be looking for people who can understand the management issues, and design and implement effective governance structures,” says Craggs.

Data cleansing and migration
As more organisations try to merge data from multiple systems in business intelligence and data warehousing applications, there is likely to be a corresponding rise in demand for people able to clean up data and put it into a form that is useful to the business and enables effective data integration.

Service component architecture (SCA)
SCA is an open SOA promoted by major Java vendors to bridge the gap between people who understand the business domain and people who understand system design. “I think SCA is something we’re going to see a lot more of in the coming three years,” says Nick Masterson-Jones, IT director of Vocalink. “That could lead to an SCA skills shortage.”

Sectors in search of integration skills

The biggest demand for integration skills has always come from the financial services sector.

Integration here is being forced to a certain extent by regulatory compliance issues, says analyst Steve Craggs, director of Lustratus Research. “For example, MiFID makes it necessary to do more integration between companies as well as within them,” he says. MiFID is the EU’s Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, which sets up a single European market and regulatory regime for investment services.

But while finance looks set to retain the highest demand for integration specialists for the foreseeable future – many finance firms are well ahead of the SOA adoption curve – more and more sectors are going to be affected, which can only increase demand across the board and lead to skills shortages.

One sector where demand for integration skills is already strong is government, particularly in Europe. Craggs says integration is already taking place to deal with the challenges of the EU.

“A lot of countries are now doing their own e-government projects, but there’s a desire to harmonise these across the EU,” he says. “For example, if I’m picked up for speeding in Spain, it would be good if their systems could look into my UK driving licence.”

But while financial services and government are likely to remain the sectors with the biggest need for integration skills, the ubiquitous drive towards SOA will mean that many other sectors will see rising demand for similar skills during the next few years.

Craggs says even industries that have been wedded to mainframes the longest, such as utilities, are going to see changes.

“Indeed any sector subject to deregulation, such as telecoms, will be affected as businesses are forced to split up operations and introduce competition,” he says. “Ultimately, though, any business that is looking to make itself more efficient is going to need these kinds of skills – retail, manufacturing, just about anybody.”