Applications are a crucial piece of the business success equation. ISVs need to be more vigilant about conforming to standards they claim to support, and we--their customers--need to be proactive about motivating them. Ask the vendor to verify a product's conformance to standards and to identify any potential interoperability issues before you make a purchase, and call the vendor on it if the product fails to live up to claims.
Interoperability used to be the "big issue" at the network layer. No longer. We've demanded that devices play well with one another, and we refuse to deploy those that don't. Now interoperability at the application layer is paramount to a successful implementation.
And while conformance to application standards can't put all integration work behind us, it does have the potential to alleviate the lion's share of expense associated with hiring the professional services and third-party integration frameworks currently necessary for successful deployment. It could also give companies the ability to design and implement a best-of-breed applications infrastructure that makes the most of each vendor's features and functionality, so we don't have to settle for less-than-ideal products.
Lori Macvittie is a technology editor at Network Computing. Write to her at [email protected].
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