Data integration crucial to UK IT.

UK organisations are facing an increasing business need to integrate IT systems, according to new analyst research.

Projects such as data migration, ERP consolidation, gaining a single view of customer, metadata management and synchronization are pushing integration up the IT scale of priorities. Over two-thirds, 69% of organisations, saw a lack of integration impacting productivity, while 57 percent felt it would hit revenues if not addressed.

The research, commissioned by data integration software vendor Informatica from analysts Datamonitor in the second quarter of 2005, surveyed 100 leading IT managers and directors in the UK from organisations in the financial services, utility, telecoms, healthcare and industrial sectors.

The growing importance of integration was demonstrated by the fact that 43 percent were currently working on IT projects driven by the need for better integration. More than 50 percent of companies have integration requirements in half or more of new projects.

Given the central part that integration is playing in business, many organisations are standardising on integration technologies across the enterprise. Sixty-seven percent of respondents plan to standardise on a single integration technology within the next two years.

www.informatica.com