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I'm talking of members of a team in charge of dealing with external providers, cloud services, social services, marketing services and so on...

They are not building the core application but they develop interfaces, with API services, data exchange and synchronisations....

Services might be (Facebook, Google, Mailchimp, Amazon...)

I have the following names in my mind but I don't know if they can be intended as fully comprehensive:

  • external services
  • system integration
  • mashup systems

Any better definition?

Hope this is not going to be close as subjective question, it shouldn't be because I believe there should be a sentence to define this particular IT activity, the best way.

Thanks

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    I would guess... API development? I've never heard any specific term for that part of the development phase. – Snoop Mar 22 '16 at 13:52
  • not talking about a phase, but a team of person in charge of development interfaces, to communicate to other services. API development would be someone who develops a services, that's the inverse function. People who uses services and develop something that uses the result of external service and make it work with the core app. – koalaok Mar 22 '16 at 14:00
  • Interface design? Why do you need a name? And naming poll questions are off-topic. – Lightness Races in Orbit Mar 22 '16 at 14:57
  • Is there some sort of confusion in your company about who is doing what so you think giving them a better name will help? – JeffO Mar 22 '16 at 23:34
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In the different consulting companies I worked for, this kind of activity used to be called Systems Integration, Enterprise Application Integration, or more generally Solution integration:

  • "Integration" refers to putting components of a system together: the connection to external services in your example is definitively a component of your whole solution.

  • "Systems" and "Enterprise applications" are sufficiently general to include software development activity (e.g. interfaces, and APIs) and - if needed- more comprehensive service delivery activity (e.g. procuring and interfacing with cloud services).

I'd suggest to avoid:

  • "external services" : this term is frequently understood as "subcontracting" and might lead to confusion.
  • "ETL (Extract,tranform,load)" : this term, that was at a time beloved synonym for building interfaces with special mapping tools, sounds nowadays a little bit outdated due to its batch-interfacing connotation.
  • "mashup systems" : this sounds (at least in my ears) more like a result than an activity.
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  • Very nice answers thanks. I'm considering to accept it – koalaok Mar 23 '16 at 9:00

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