Systems integrator

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A systems integrator is a person or company that specializes in bringing together component subsystems into a whole and ensuring that those subsystems function together, a practice known as System Integration. Systems integrators may work in many fields but the term is generally used in the information technology (IT) field, the defense industry, or in media.

According to the Institute for Partner Education & Development, systems integrators traditionally realizes approximately 50 percent of revenue from consulting services and 40 percent of revenue from IT services in design, implementation and post-transaction consulting. They are different from an IT Consultant in that they also take title to product.

[edit] In information technology

In IT, system integrators integrate multiple systems for inputting, processing, interpreting, storing, and categorizing data. For example, a systems integrator may build an IT solution integrating an Oracle-based inventory tracking system, a document management system, a Microsoft CRM system, a group of Panasonic scanners, and a Rimage storage system to produce an overall solution for the customer.

Systems integrators also play many roles in media and the defense industry.

Systems integrator may also be considered an informal career path in IT in the USA and a formal career path in the EU.

Systems integrators generally have to be good at matching customers’ needs with existing products. An inductive reasoning aptitude is useful for quickly understanding how to operate a system or a GUI. A systems integrator will tend to benefit from being a generalist, knowing a little bit about a large number of products. Systems integration includes a substantial amount of diagnostic and troubleshooting work. The ability to research existing products and software components is also helpful.

[edit] In the defense industry

In the defense industry, the job of 'Systems Integration' engineer is growing in importance as defense systems become more 'connected'. As well as integrating new systems the task of integrating current systems is attracting a lot of research and effort. It is only in recent years that systems have started to be deployed that can interconnect with each other, most systems were designed as 'stovepipe' designs with no thought to future connectivity.

The problem is now to harness all the information available, from the various information generators (or sensors) into one complete picture.

As well as the design of the actual interfaces much effort is being put into presenting the information in a useful manner. The level of information, needed by the different levels in the military structure, and the relevance of the information (information can become outdated in seconds) is so variable that it may be necessary to have more than one system then connect these together.

Another problem is how information is networked, the Internet may seem an obvious solution but it is vulnerable to denial of service and physical destruction of the key 'hubs'. The obvious answer is to use a dedicated military communication system but the bandwidth needed would be astronomical.

Army Warrant Officer (United States) military occupational specialty (MOS) 140A - Command and Control Systems Technician is an example of a system integrator in the defense industry. 140A Warrant Officers assigned to Brigade Combat Teams (BCT) integrate systems with multiple operating systems (OS) and hardware configurations – that include: UNIX, Linux & Microsoft Windows Others can fill a similar role at the Division level and higher.