History
The term "integration competency center" and its acronym ICC was popularized by Roy Schulte of Gartner in a series of articles and conference presentations beginning in 2001 with The Integration Competency Center. He picked up the term from one of his colleagues, Gary Long, who found some of his clients using it (they took the established term “competency center” and applied it to integration). Prior to that (from 1997 to 2001) Gartner had been referring to it as the central integration team. The concept itself (even before it was given a label) goes back to 1996 in one of Gartner’s first reports on integration.
A major milestone was the publication in 2005 of the first book on the topic: Integration Competency Center: An Implementation Methodology by John G. Schmidt and David Lyle. The book introduced five ICC organizational models and explored the people, process and technology dimensions of ICC’s. Several reviews of the book can be found at IT Toolbox and at Amazon. The concept of integration as a competency in the IT domain has now survived for over 10 years and appears to be picking up momentum and broad-based acceptance.
These days, ICC’s are often called, integration center of excellence, SOA center of excellence, the data management center of excellence and other variants. The most advanced ICC's are using Lean Integration practices to optimize end-to-end processes and to drive continuous improvements. Universities are also beginning to include integration topics in their MBA programs and computer science curricula. For example, The College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State University has established a Enterprise Informatics and Integration Center with the following mission:
"The Enterprise Informatics and Integration Center (EI²) will actively engage industry, non-profit, and government agency leaders to address critical issues in enterprise processes, knowledge management, and decision making."
Read more about this topic: Integration Competency Center
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