The big gap

The world of Dovetail

There is a big gap between the digital world and the “real” world. In fact, IT has been trying to bridge this gap since computers were invented. This is necessary because these two worlds are completely different, and not at all compatible. On one side you have zeros and ones, and on the other people and things.

To bridge the gap between low level tech and business you at least need computer (server) with an operating system, such as Windows or Linux.

In the beginning of our information age, solutions were actually made like this. For example, a supermarket in the eighties bought servers that were placed somewhere in a ‘server room’ at headquarters. Then they hired programmers to write software for things like administration or warehousing.

Still too big

In practice, the IT departments that build the software weren’t very productive. Instead of supporting the core business of the company, they were spending more and more time on tech. On hosting, maintenance, on upgrades, installations, debugging, testing, and integrating all of systems with each other.

The IT department was in danger of slowly falling into the gap between tech and the business. To fill this gap specialized tech and consultancy companies appeared that created generic tools and business software. In the 90s and the first decade of this century, these parties were common, but managing all these tools and parties still cost the IT department a lot of work.

Integration Made Easy

Later this century, new concepts have emerged to close the gap, such as:

1. Cloud providers.
2. Software-as-a-service.
3. No-code and Low-code.

Now IT Departments need to be less concerned with core technologies. Still, a big issue remains. All of these software, needs to be integrated. Middleware software takes care of this, but as usual, there is a huge gap here between technology and businesses.

You have middleware, protocols, data formats on one side, and business processes and customer needs on the other side. At integrationmadeeasy.com, we are passionately building the Dovetail platform to bridge this gap further. The platform is hosted in the cloud, built on open source software, and offers a low-code user interface.

Although the platform is closer to the business then traditional middleware, it is still insufficient to completely bridge the gap between technology and business. We are very aware of this, so we try to think beyond the platform. About the tech where it’s based on, and the businesses that are built on top of it. Without the other pieces the platform would fill just through gap as before.

What are the building blocks to build a modern bridge between tech and business?

Core technologies

The core technologies are the basic building blocks of IT, think of data centers, servers, networks, operating systems, and programming languages

Cloud & Frameworks

On top of of the core technologies you find Cloud providers like Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. Other building blocks for the platform are software frameworks, like React (frontend), Spring Boot (backend). For Dovetail the core framework used is the integration framework Apache Camel.

Integration Platform as a Service

The frameworks and libraries make separate layers like the frontend, backend, API and storage. Together that they make the platform.

Partners

All of this tech needs to be translated to business processes. Take for example our partner WCG (Wholesale Consulting Group). They offer the concept “The Digital Wholesaler” to their customers. The concept can broken down in business processes that are important for wholesalers, like an order process or a financial process.

Dovetail is used to implement these processes, connect all applications and move customer data. The combined knowledge of both integration, tech, industry and processes make that partners are important links to build the bridge.

Business

The business uses the solutions made by partners. Sometimes they co-create together with partners. Only they have to unique knowledge for the organization and can translate them to the needs of their customers. They are the final link.

The world of Dovetail

Today it’s still possible for an organization to buy a server, and self create custom software. In practice however you need every block on the bridge, to bridge the gap between tech and the business. Skipping a block, mostly means you cannot focus on the core activities of your business.

Every organization lays it’s own block. It only concern with itself and the blocks next to it. Dovetail, for example, is not concerned with core technologies like chips, servers and data centers. We are also not aware about the end customer.

We are actively working with open source projects like Apache Camel and our cloud specialists make the servers run smoothly. Also we are concerned with working with partners to improve the product and understand customer needs.

The are a lot of steps to get from top of zeroes and ones to real world solutions. Most business people aren’t aware of that. In the past it could mean that IT projects fell into gap and where never seen again. By building a bridge where everyone has a clear role you don’t need to be aware anymore, and can focus on your own part of the puzzle.