Philip K. Dick’s science fiction novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is set in post-apocalyptic San Francisco after World War Terminus. The film adaptation, Blade Runner, is set in Los Angeles, November 2019.
In my opinion, this story is emblematic of our industry and provides a metaphor for the challenges an integration firm will face by the year 2021. I’m not suggesting that we will be terrorized by rogue androids or that we will be forced to move our businesses to off-world colonies. I am suggesting that we have a paradoxical relationship with the technology we deploy and the market we create.
This paradox will inevitably lead to the demise of systems integrators as a discrepancy continues to grow between the perceived value of technology and the perceived value of integration. By 2021 many of us will have inadvertently integrated ourselves out of business.
In Blade Runner, the antagonist is the integrated technology. A few self-actualized and lethal super-androids (Nexus 6 replicants) have gone rogue and come back to Earth to confront their creator. In other words, the integrated systems want to confront their systems integrator.
Imagine if the technology in four of your high-profile and complex divisible conference rooms got together, went rogue and hunted you down demanding new firmware, thermal management and a longer meantime before failure. Chances are, some version of this has already happened to you and a system that you integrated to make your client’s life better has turned on you and made your life a whole lot worse.
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In the movie, the androids seek out the manufacturers of their components as a means of finding their creator. They understand that they are greater than the sum of their parts and they hold their creator ultimately responsible for their experiences.
In other words, the system holds the integrator responsible for the direct and indirect results of its existence. Imagine if the conference room technology that just hunted you down is holding you responsible for all the botched conference calls, presentation mishaps and compromised business communication.
In the end, motivated by the rage of its own existence, one of the androids kills its creator. The system kills its Integrator. Blade Runner is a metaphor for our business and the paradox that we have created. The business of systems integration will ultimately destroy the systems integration business.
As manufacturers create their market with propriety open standards and restricted open sales channels, system integrators create their market with competitive underpricing and devalued added services. In this scenario, the end user is an innocent bystander dragged along as Manufacturers and Integrators race to the bottom toward Integration Terminus.
The first volley in Integration Terminus is consolidation. We are seeing this play out today in our industry as integration firms merge or are acquired by corporations looking to diversify and influence their position in the market. Consolidation without diversification will simply create an extended relay race toward Integration Terminus.
Diversification is the key to survival in 2021. For those of us who make it to 2021, our firms will include knowledge brokers and applications engineers who specialize in the integration of virtual assistants, open air gesture communication and tactile holographic platforms.
We will have 3D printing capabilities and we will manufacture custom components including microelectromechanical systems that will collect and transfer information between the physical world and our firm’s distributed knowledge network. We will develop and integrate mind-machine interfaces and we will think to each other.
We will think back upon the systems of today with the same bewilderment we have toward 18th-century operating rooms. We will remember the old days and we will think to each other, “I hope our systems appreciate what we have done for them.”
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