Technology Mashup

Why is information integration such a 'high-wire' act?...

This is why,

1. Different regions will refuse to use the corporate backed solution, for almost any reason they can find.
2. Different development groups will chose to hide their systems rather than spend time learning/migrating to the corporate solution, because they dont want to give up their indipendance
3. Systems that may have started as small information repositories will have organically grown, and had turned into business critical systems, to replace them with the corporate information solution is just too risky
4. Acquisition of new business will caused dilution as the new units existing information systems will be too expensive to change.
5. Multi language content (and character sets) will cause issues during migration leading to the previous system remaining in place.

Just like King Canute you cant hold back the tide. Give up and instead implement and publicise a search facility that provides a single place to go to find content rather than have a sing place to go to author content.