The IT community is slowly coming to terms with the fact that no company, big or small, will ever be able to build a fully homogeneous and coherent IT infrastructure. IT people will always be developing new platforms, packages, and tools, and companies will always be seeking new business opportunities. Together, they will ensure that the perfect IT solution remains an ever-moving target. Even the company that scraps its messy systems and invests in a sleek replacement has no guarantee that the result will be compatible with the systems operated by a company it might acquire some time in the future.

Companies must therefore turn their minds to how their present systems can adapt to the technological developments and new business challenges that lie ahead. Several "front-end" approaches exist that involve bolting a new system on to old ones to create a user interface that integrates the data and functionalities of multiple existing systems. Such approaches are likely to deliver business value much faster than those that entail replacing or completely redesigning established systems, and industry experts increasingly see them as the way forward. However, some front-end approaches are better than others.

The difference lies in the way in...