What is the best way to ensure software interoperability?

When standards are well-defined and widely adopted, it becomes easier for different software systems to understand and communicate with each other effectively. This includes defining standards for data formats, communication protocols, interfaces, and APIs. By adhering to these standards, developers can ensure that their software components can seamlessly integrate with other systems, regardless of their underlying technologies or platforms. This approach promotes consistency, reliability, and ease of integration, ultimately enhancing the overall interoperability of the software ecosystem.

Standards are here for reason. Good news all major vendor’s understand this. We live in multi-cloud world and major players like AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud respecting these standards and offer them for their services by default. Same goes for applications like Salesforce, SAP, Service Now, Workday and so on. And even if you have some legacy infrastructure you need to communicate there tools that can allow you to do that like Informatica, Mulesoft, Tibco or even native tools in AWS, Azure, GCP, OCI allow you connect easily.

Middleware refers to software that acts as an intermediary between different applications, systems, or components, facilitating communication and data exchange between them. APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) provide a set of rules and protocols that allow different software applications to communicate with each other. By using middleware and APIs, developers can create standardized interfaces and protocols that enable seamless interaction between various software components, regardless of their underlying technologies or platforms. This approach promotes interoperability by abstracting the complexities of individual systems and providing a common interface for integration and data exchange.

Adopting a service-oriented architecture is an excellent way to ensure software interoperability. This architecture breaks down applications into independent and autonomous services that communicate with each other through well-defined interfaces, such as APIs. By separating functionalities into services, integration and reuse of components across different systems are facilitated, enhancing software flexibility and scalability. Additionally, it enables individual updating and maintenance of each service, streamlining development and reducing implementation times.

Software interoperability is far more an architectural problem than an engineering problem. And even succesful structural work is pointless without close attention to transitioning user interfaces and support, from just legacy or separate systems to extended or collaborating systems. There is no point in investing in interoperability without both IT Change Management and Organizational Change Management, regardless of the scope of system development.