Systems Integrator

When one of my neighbors or the plumber asks the inevitable "so what do you do Mr. Hirschfeld?" I tend to stumble over answering "systems integrator" and instead say "make computers talk to each other." This usually satisfies the person asking without inspiring them to ask for me to help them re-install Windows98 on their vintage 386 (whew!).

While this works for my neighbors, people who depend on computers to improve their business usually want to know more. They all seem to have stories about new programs that solve one problem but create more work. The bottom line is that applications that people buy do not work together.

There are many cases where even after someone buys a fancy new system to solve all their problems, their employees are still rekeying information back and forth between new system and legacy or support systems. Delays in reporting occur when people have to get involved in creating or reformatting reports because the programs cannot communicate or do not generate the reports that management needs.

System Integrators solve this problem. The Systems Integrators' job is to help people get access to their information and to make their applications more productive. When systems are integrated, data passes between programs smoothly, reports are available quickly, and they fit the way people work. When you get reports in minutes instead of days so you can react much more quickly to changes in the work environment. The goal is to work smarter and detect problems before they become crises.

For example, one of my clients is using an off-the-shelf accounting package but they also needed to add a database program that reformats expense information from the General Ledger into a more usable format. Originally, they were spending several days a month retyping information into Excel to re-format their reports. I built a bridge program that takes the raw data from the accounting system, pumps it into the database, and then builds their special reports, no re-keying required. The reports, which are used to make critical management decisions, are available 10 days earlier each month.

In another case, a client purchased a large manufacturing program that met 80% of their needs, but needed a simple way to track equipment maintenance. I built an add-on program that uses both new information and data from the main system to handle their maintenance records. When tools are taken out of service, their status appears in the main system. The result is a seamless extension of their manufacturing system.

Systems integration may require anything from a onetime conversion from an old application to the creation of a whole new user interface. Many system integration tasks involve building "pumps" or "demons." Pumps are programs that work by themselves to move information from one program to another. A demon (also spelled daemon) is any type of a special program that acts by itself without a person telling it to start and is never turned off. A typical demon may act like a watchdog to perform routine checks of a system and will even send alerts about problems.

To accomplish these tasks Systems Integrators use special features of applications (called application programming interfaces or APIs) to move data in and out of programs. This is relatively straightforward when a program uses a well-known standard like the Open Database Connection (ODBC) API. The information in a program is much harder to get when the programs used outdated standards or when the data resides on a special purpose computer (for example a programmable logic controller or PLC).

Building technology bridges requires special skills and experience. Systems Integrators generally have a broader technology background then technology specialists (like programmers or network administrators) because they need to cross between applications, development tools, databases, and operating systems. They are the proverbial technology "jack-of-all-trades."

Whether my projects demand rocket science or old-fashioned programming know-how, they are all focused on helping my clients get everything they can from their software. I guess in the end my job comes down to a very simple idea: just like a tailor fine-tunes your clothes to the perfect fit, a System Integrator fine-tunes your software fit your business.