ABSTRACT
Systems integration and business process reengineering have become mainstays of the executive's vocabulary during the 1990s. Historically, organizations' ideas concerning systems integration normally were confined to the technical aspects of hardware and the interconnectivity of components. Integration had a very mechanical connotation, to mean making different pieces of equipment work together in a piecemeal fashion. The most logical place to start is with the marketplace for systems integration and the objectives and forces driving the need to integrate. Systems and business integration is perhaps the most dominant and growth-oriented segment of the professional business services marketplace. The industry and process for integrating systems are extremely difficult both to define and measure with any level of precision. Systems integration is achieved when the processing environment, technologies, and business processes all align with the strategies of the organization and function in a harmonious and congruent manner.
