Foreword
B
T’s expansion and enthusiastic drive towards world-class status in a global telecommunications market has put pressure on its systems integration units to meet world-best targets. The commercial benefits of a successful, efficient, effective integration organisation are evident. Consequently, over the last few years, demand for internal and external systems integration services has grown at a spectacular rate, driven by changing technology and increased customer expectations. At the same time, delivery time-scales get shorter while the number, variety, size, and complexity of BT’s network and operational support systems increases. The challenge to systems integration units is the same as elsewhere within BT’s global operation — how can we get more out of our substantial investment in networks, operational support systems and infrastructure, and faster? It is no longer feasible to develop solutions from scratch. In today’s sophisticated, discriminating markets, innovative products and services must be produced to a high specification, and quickly. Where possible, just-in-time production techniques must be applied to the systems engineering factory. New products and services must be derived by re-configuring existing components. Novel ways of using existing network and system capabilities must be sought constantly. BT must develop only those components that differentiate the company from its commercial competitors and give it a leading edge. It is against this background of commercial enterprise, world-beating effectiveness targets, and change that BT’s systems integration units have risen to the challenge and delivered some of the world’s largest, most complex, integrated solutions. Most of the themed papers presented in this edition of the Journal have been produced by people from Systems Integration Department, BT’s internal integration house, but this is not only source of integration activity within the company. The other major integration unit within BT, Syntegra, delivers integration solutions to our external customers and faces similar technological and commercial challenges. Systems integration is a whole-life activity and this is evident from the range of topics covered by this edition. In practice, integrators place a lot of emphasis on early life cycle work (e.g. analysis and design verification, rapid application development testing), because getting it right early saves time, money, and embarrassment later. In this collection of papers, supporting activities such as configuration management, test automation, model management, and technical consultancy all receive equal billing. The integrator’s work is not done when the system has been delivered. There is still ongoing operational support, system maintenance, and the drive to improve integration techniques and skills to consider. These topics are also discussed in several papers, while case studies provide a snapshot of integration activity — assisting customers and delivering large service platform solutions. Systems integration is a strategically important and stimulating topic and the authors of the papers have enjoyed making their contribution. I know you will find the material interesting and, I hope, useful.
John Ames Systems Integration BT Laboratories Guest Editor BT Technol J Vol 15 No 3 July 1997
