Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Here is another term that people tend to confuse in the world of building and using systems.

I can connect my Panasonic camera to my Apple computer quite easily. Both systems have USB ports. I simply connect the two with a standard USB cable. Wow! Magic!

Who cares?

Now lets consider connecting my Panasonic camera to a new Apple computer that has a USB-C port. Uh, well, look on Google for a gadget that converts USB to USB-C. Right?

Suppose such a converter doesn’t exist, now I have to do systems integration. I get a USB cable and a USB-C cable and cut both of them to expose the wires. I use a little circuit board to connect the correct wires from each cable to one another. I write a device driver for the new Apple computer to understand what is coming across those wires through my custom-made interface board.

That is systems integration: I have integrated or connected two systems that were not built to connect. I made new hardware, software, or both so that the systems would work together. The word new is key. I built something new so that systems would function together.

Installing software on a server without writing new software to make it work, is not systems integration. Connecting any set of devices via USB cables is not systems integration.

Let us use our terms correctly. We are good enough to do such.