Today, interoperability is so essential and so natural in our daily lives that we often don't even notice it.
Think about sending an email from Gmail to a friend who uses Outlook, or making a PIX instant payment to an account at another bank. Or even transferring money to an account abroad. That's the kind of connection we're talking about.
These processes are only possible because different systems, built by different companies, “talk” to each other seamlessly. But what exactly is interoperability?
Let's find out!
What's the difference between interoperability and systems integration?
Although the terms interoperability and integration are often used as synonyms, they don't mean exactly the same thing. Let's start by clarifying the difference:
Systems integration is the act of connecting two or more systems so they work together. Interoperability ensures that these systems can not only exchange information, but also interpret it and use it intelligently.
While integration often requires building custom adaptations, interoperability relies on global, open standards that make these connections simpler, more scalable and more cost-effective.
What are the benefits of interoperability?
Interoperability is, essentially, the “ability” of different systems, devices and platforms to connect, exchange data and work together without friction.
In practical terms, it's what ensures, for example, that a ride-hailing app like Uber works flawlessly on any smartphone, regardless of the operating system.
Interoperability brings a number of advantages for companies and organizations, which is why it's fundamental to digital infrastructure:
- Operational efficiency: reduces rework, time and cost by letting systems talk to each other directly;
- Faster decision-making: real-time information helps managers act with more speed and precision;
- Greater scalability: with interoperable systems, companies can integrate new tools without hassle.
- Better user experience: delivers more integrated, efficient and personalized solutions that better meet users' needs.
Interoperability best practices
To implement interoperability successfully, it's important to:
- Adopt recognized global standards, preferably open ones;
- Plan for interoperability from the start of every project;
- Train teams to operate and manage interoperable systems;
- Ensure the security of shared data.
Where is it used?
Interoperability is present across many industries, directly shaping how organizations operate.
Healthcare
Interoperability allows medical equipment such as CT scanners, heart monitors and electronic health record systems to share information in real time.
This speeds up diagnoses, improves communication between professionals and optimizes treatment, making patient care more efficient and accurate.
Government
It makes integration between ministries and departments easier, through systems that exchange information quickly and securely.
This makes public services more efficient, as with data-driven policies, and improves the citizen experience with solutions such as those offered by gov.br and digital service platforms.
Public safety
Firefighters, paramedics and police officers rely on interoperable systems to coordinate fast, accurate responses during emergencies
Sharing information in real time across different teams is essential to save lives and minimize damage in critical situations.
Software engineering
Developers use interoperability to build applications that communicate and work together, even when they're written in different programming languages.
This simplifies processes, lowers integration costs and improves the experience for users, who can access services more seamlessly.
Machine Learning
Interoperability organizes and standardizes data from multiple sources, allowing artificial intelligence models to be trained efficiently.
The result is more accurate algorithms, less development time and easier integration of AI solutions into enterprise systems.
Interoperability creating value in technology: real cases
Interoperability gives organizations more options and the freedom to choose their business partners without being locked into a specific technology.
Observability with OpenTelemetry
Until recently, every Observability solution used its own agents to collect logs, metrics and traces. This created a degree of vendor lock-in and made migrating between providers difficult.
OpenTelemetry gained real momentum a little over 4 years ago, proposing open standards and interoperability across Observability solutions. It already lets you collect data using open standards that can be sent to any of the many vendors that support them. As a result, companies have gained portability and more bargaining power.
Infrastructure automation with Terraform
Another important example of interoperability is infrastructure automation tooling. Terraform is a tool for automating the provisioning and configuration of servers. It makes managing cloud resources very similar across providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.
The knowledge you build carries over, and companies also gain more bargaining power.
What are the types of interoperability?
There are different types of interoperability, each with a specific role:
- Technical interoperability: refers to the connection between systems, using standards such as communication protocols and data formats. Example: an IoT device sending data to a monitoring platform;
- Semantic interoperability: ensures that systems not only share data, but also understand the meaning behind it. This is crucial, for example, in healthcare systems that need to interpret medical results;
- Organizational interoperability: allows companies with different structures to collaborate and exchange information without having to change their internal processes.
- Human interoperability: relates to how people collect information, with a focus on policies and accessibility.
What are the challenges of interoperability?
Interoperability depends on standards and protocols that act as a “common language” for systems. These standards are defined by global organizations or adopted by consensus among companies in the industry.
Extremely beneficial as it is, interoperability faces some challenges, including the lack of universal standards, organizational resistance to change, and security concerns.
On top of that, legacy systems often weren't designed to interoperate, which requires investment in modernization.
Where to get integrated management: Elven
Elven is a reference in integrated management and interoperability solutions for companies seeking efficiency and lower costs in complex environments.
Our platforms use open source tools such as Grafana to deliver solutions tailored to the needs of the Brazilian and Latin American markets.
Whether your company is a BigTech, a startup or a traditional business with a complex operation, we're ready to transform your digital infrastructure.
Get in touch with our team!
Interoperability in the observability stack
The most concrete case of interoperability for anyone running production systems is the monitoring stack itself: instrument the application once, with an open standard like OpenTelemetry, and be able to switch tools without re-instrumenting anything. That's what separates a stack where you choose the vendor from one where the vendor chooses for you.
Want to assess how locked in to a vendor your stack is? Talk to the Elven team.
