Since the US trade weekly Computer Systems News became Systems Integration News in all but name a year or so ago, there has been a tendency around here to yawn at many of its stories as its gallant band of journalists contrive – and often it sounds all-too-contrived – to put a systems integration spin on every industry development or new product announcement. Is it a mistake to take such a lofty view of a major development in the industry? Aren’t IBM and DEC and Unisys and Nixdorf and Norsk Data bustling and reorganising and rushing around gearing themselves up to gain a large slice of this lucrative pie?
Blandishments
Well, yes, but they are companies that are in one way or another in trouble, and the people with whom they will be seeking to do business know that they are in trouble, and will be less than easy to convince that all the blandishments they receive from eager systems integration salespeople really reflect an earnest desire to do only the best by the customer, rather than a desperation to dig DEC or Unisys and their shareholders out of an uncomfortably deep hole. A second problem is that systems integration – the management of a major development project from the specification to the handing over of a completed system – is increasingly getting mixed up with the quite different activity of facilities management, where an outside company takes over an existing installation or set of computer resources and runs them on behalf of the company that owns them – and in some cases going as far as taking over ownership of them and simply selling a complete service back to the former owner. The question that has to be asked is whether a computer manufacturer is ever the best type of company to perform either activity. In the first place, the reason that most are seeking to plunge into the business at all is the aforementioned hole in which they find themselves. If you are a manufacturer making proprietary mainframes that you must go on making in order to derive revenue irreplaceable in the short term from an existing, substantial but declining customerbase, you are going to be tempted to do everything you can to get as much of your proprietary gear into the user site regardless of whether it is the best and most cost-effective system for the customer. And even if the customer feels he can kick you out after four or seven years or whatever is the term of the contract, several large manufacturers are in such trouble that they’re much more worried about meeting next quarter’s payroll than anything that might or might not happen five or seven years down the road.
Chilling
In the second place, expecting a mainframe manufacturer to bring a major software development in on time and on budget is like expecting the electricity board to give you a firm time for its meter reader or engineer to call, and sticking to it. All of which suggests that manufacturers plunging into systems integration and facilities management will pick up some business – but not enough to make the activity profitable or a major revenue generator. That is not to say that it is not a good business to be in, that there is not a growing demand, and that there are companies that will make fortunes out of it. Unfortunately for the newcomers, it is likely to be another case of unto those that hath shall it be given: the companies best placed to make new fortunes are the ones that have years of experience already – Electronic Data Systems Corp, Hoskyns Group Plc, Cap Gemini Sogeti SA and Computer Sciences Corp. There is another army marching in on the systems integration and facilities management market – the giant accountancy firms. The increasingly successful attempts at diversification by these giant unlimited liability partnerships of accountants – first into computer consultancy, then into software design tools, now into systems integration, would surely have generations of their predecessors turning in their graves. One of the most chilling legal rulings in Britain’s House of Lords this year was that auditors had no responsibility to anyone except
the management of the company they were auditing: the fact that they have no responsibility to the shareholders, who have been so badly burned in cases like British & Commonwealth Plc and Ferranti International Plc – where the reaction of – clearly ill-informed – lay people was what were the accountants doing for their money – suggest that shareholders should routinely vote down the motion at the annual meeting to set the remuneration of the auditors. The possibilities for conflict of interest where a big accountancy firm derives enormous revenues from auditing a large computer company’s accounts and then starts routinely specifying plug-compatible equipment in computer projects because it’s cheaper – until there are rumours in the press that the big computer company may be looking for new accountants, make it clear that accountants must face the facts.
Boring
They are universally seen as boring, which may be unfortunate, but they are extremely well-paid for being boring, and they should either settle for that or get out and into something exciting like systems integration – they shouldn’t be allowed to have it both ways. It seems incontrovertible that the regulators should insist that all the big accountancy firms divest their computer services activities, either selling them to commercial companies or floating them off as free-standing companies answerable to shareholders. The biggest irritation about all the hype over systems integration is that it seems just another example of the immaturity of the computer industry. The 1980s have seen a dismal string of dead cert winners that have either fallen at the first fence or proved to be the key to fame and fortune not for a multitude of players but for just a handful of companies that were already well-placed to capitalise on them. Into the first category fall artificial intelligence and robotics, into the second fall desk-top publishing, minisupercomputers and third party maintenance – and, we’re ready to bet – systems integration and facilities management. Image processing is not likely to make fortunes for more than a handful of the companies rushing to embrace it so enthusiastically, and we have our doubts about how many fortunes will be made from applications generators and software engineering, too…
