Integration Love Story med Mimmi Gullberg

Introduktion

First of all, thank you so much, Mimmi, for joining us on Integration Love Story. We are very pleased to have you, and thank you for being here.

Thank you for having me. That’s very nice, very fun.

The integration space might know you for your integration work, but please tell us a little about yourself — and emphasize a bit about what you do outside of integration.

My name is Mimmi Gullberg. I’ve just started a new role at Green Cargo as an integration architect. The company focuses a lot on sustainable rail logistics, basically helping industries move their goods in a smarter and more climate-friendly way.

Before that, I worked 11 years at CGI, also as an integration consultant — all different kinds of things. Worked with BizTalk in the beginning, then moved over to Azure, both developing and doing architecture work.

Outside of work, I love doing a lot of sport. I have a little girl at home, a five-year-old, and my partner. So I mostly drive her to trainings, I would say.

En perfekt helg och favoritårstid

What does a perfect weekend look like for you?

A perfect weekend starts on the Friday. Hopefully you can pop a bottle of champagne in the Friday afternoon — that would be a perfect start. Then have some snacks, watch a movie that the whole family would like. Normally the little one gets to choose, so we just tag along on that one.

Otherwise, I really like to get some quiet time in the morning for myself, a good cup of coffee, go out and play some golf, or maybe skiing if it’s winter. We might end Saturday with a good dinner with friends at a wine bar. That’s the perfect weekend for me.

Which season do you vibe with the most?

I would probably say autumn. That’s when I really like this crispy air — when you go out in the morning, you get that crispy little air and you have the colors changing all over. A lot of red and orange leaves right now. It’s very beautiful.

But also Sweden calms down a bit in the fall. You get more time at home, more time for cooking. Sweden in summer is fantastic, but you also feel like you should always be doing something. The fall is a good way to cool down. And it becomes easier to have people over spontaneously — during summer you tend to plan things outside, but in the autumn everyone settles into their routines and you can just invite people home.

Från konsult till intern integratör — 11 år på CGI

You’ve mentioned the shift from a consulting company to working internally. What did you carry from your consulting past into what you’re doing now?

When I started at CGI, I thought I’d stay maybe two or three years and then move on. But somewhere along the way I found myself valuing the depth — learning everything from the ground up and taking that with me step by step. I did the coding, I learned and understood everything. Maybe I’m not the best coder and I don’t know everything about each package, but I still understand it all and I can do a lot of it.

Then I took the next step, learning more about architecture, moving from BizTalk to Azure and everything that comes with that — more infrastructure and so on. I got a really good blend of things, and I worked with really good people and learned a lot, both professionally and personally.

Now I wanted to see more from the other side — how the enterprise side works, how a start team collaborates with them, and how we can close the gap between integration and business processes. That’s not always something you get to do fully as a consultant.

What was the biggest challenge going from consulting to working internally?

As a consultant, you’re always costing money. When you’re internal, people listen to you in a different way. What you say gets taken more seriously, and you can build things more sustainably over time without having to justify every single decision commercially.

Råd till den som börjar sin IT-karriär

What would your advice be to someone just starting out in IT or integration?

Do what you do really, really well before you try to run forward. Be the best you can at what you do. Learn it deeply. Then take the next step. A lot of people just want to move forward as fast as possible, and of course that’s possible — but if you build all that knowledge with you, it will carry you for a very long time. We have a lot of years left in our working lives, so you’ll have time to do everything else too. Build a stable ground first.

You have to stay hungry. If you don’t, you miss whatever comes next. I love BizTalk, I think it’s a really good and stable platform — but that doesn’t mean everything should stay like that. You still look forward to what comes next. You always need to understand and adapt to new technologies and have the capacity to do that.

En typisk dag som ny integratörsarkitekt

How does a typical day or week look for you right now at Green Cargo?

I’ve only been here for about three weeks, so it’s still a lot of introductions. But I’m starting to get into some projects now.

The main plan is to set a new real integration strategy and make sure we’re following it, while at the same time learning the new domain — trains, rail, all the components that need to be integrated. Right now I’m sitting a lot with new terminology, trying to learn what different parts of a train are and what they do.

On the technical side, I’m going through the existing platform — how it’s structured, what kind of landing zones we have, how the network is set up, where integration is placed, what tools we’re using: function apps, Logic Apps, Data Factory. Just trying to get a really good picture of the platform itself. And alongside that, digging deeper into the project I’m currently in. It’s a lot of talking with the business, talking with the developers, trying to mix everything together to get a clear picture of where we are, what we want to do, and how we should continue.

Affärsdrivna utmaningar i reglerad miljö

Are there any business challenges you’ve already spotted that you’re excited about solving?

There are a lot of ongoing projects running in parallel, and the big challenge is making sure we’re building all of that in a way that makes good use of the platform — so we can keep building on it later without accumulating too much technical debt.

And in this industry there’s a lot of regulation. When you work with trains in Sweden and Europe, you always need to report where the trains are, what they’re carrying, and so on. When you start changing systems with those kinds of requirements, you need to make sure everything still works within specific time frames — because the rail timetable is set once a year. You can’t just roll out a new system during the same period without causing major disruption to the business.

So a lot of the projects need to be done, some of them replacing really old platforms, but they also need to be done fast enough to hit the cutover windows. Finding that balance — doing what needs to be done, doing it well, but not building bad solutions just to make the deadline — that’s the challenge.

Vad integratörer borde bli bättre på

What is something the integration space is generally not good enough at?

We are the best.

But seriously — I think to be good at integration, you also need to be good at business. You need to understand the processes and everything behind them, and you need to be able to talk both technically and non-technically. Otherwise there will be gaps and it becomes hard to understand each other.

And I’ve been in a lot of projects where the business says “perfect, you’re integrating things, so you also go in and change system A, B and C and do all the work there” — and that’s not really what integration is. You still need the people who own those systems to handle their own data and rebuild their parts. Explaining what we do and who does what, and closing the gap between everyone — that’s a big part of the job.

The architect elevator, as Gregor Hohpe describes it in his book, is actually about exactly this: you need to ride that elevator up to the business and bring them with you, or go down to the technical floor and explain things there. You move between all of those levels. The architect role is no longer just about technical competence — you have to talk business too.

Den icke-uppenbara superkraften

What’s the non-obvious superpower of a good integrator?

Curiosity and communication. You really want to learn what other people do — the business, the systems, the processes around everything. And you have the communication skills to talk about both the technical and the business side so that everyone understands you.

If you can do that, you can bridge any gap. And that’s what makes integration work in the end. If you’re good at talking business and integration, then you can also do the exciting things — you can explain why an agent should go here, or why an MCP interface makes sense there. You can put yourself in a position to actually build what you want to build.

Vad är Mimmi nyfiken på härnäst?

What are you curious about in the integration space right now?

Definitely AI, and how we can enhance integration work with it. Not just in terms of generating code or documentation, but actually helping us design smarter data flows — using AI to predict issues before they happen, or optimize how messages are routed and transformed. That would be really interesting.

I’m also looking more into streaming data — not just moving data in real time, but how we might be able to analyze it as it flows through the integration layer in a new way. I think that could open up some real possibilities.

But all of that still depends on having a solid foundation underneath. If you have a stable platform with everything in order, you can try out most things and see what actually works for your business.

Will integration look the same in two years?

No, things are starting to change. But I still think you’ll need your foundation, your enterprise integration patterns, your platform. If you have that stable base and you have all you need for the basic work, then you can add a lot of new capabilities on top — generative AI, streaming data, whatever comes next. That foundation will still be needed for a lot of years.

Ett konkret projekt som gav verkligt värde

Is there a project you’re particularly proud of — something where you really felt you helped people?

It’s always when you see the real value you’re bringing to the business. It could be something as simple as syncing data between systems — order handling, economic data, that kind of thing. And you see that suddenly they don’t need to spend 15 or 30 hours a week trying to find data, collect it, and figure out where it should go. They get everything they need in the right place. They don’t need to copy things between systems manually anymore, and instead they can focus on what they’re actually good at and what creates real value.

It’s not the most exciting thing technically, it can be quite routine. But it gives a lot of value to the people on the other side. That means a lot.

Det dyraste misstaget — två sekunder försenat

Do you have a mistake you can share — one where you immediately knew something had gone wrong?

I know from the team that there have been situations where a message arrived two seconds too late — and when you’re working with airplanes and that kind of time-critical logistics, the consequence can be that the plane has to park at a completely different gate, far away. That costs a lot of money to sort out and means more time lost for passengers.

So you really need to have good control over messages, timing, and the ordering of things, because it can cost the business a great deal. Most people in that situation wouldn’t even think about the integrators — they’d be frustrated at the airline. But it started with a two-second delay somewhere in the system.

The code itself is the baseline. But it’s always the human impact that actually matters.

Integration Love Story

Do you have a spark — a moment where you really felt you loved integration?

When I was at university, we did a project with a nonprofit organization here in Sweden. We were supposed to map out their IT architecture. We walked in and saw this spider web of connections, everything point to point, and somewhere there I thought: okay, I think I want to work with integration. This is something we need to be able to do a lot better. This is not efficient in any way.

I think that’s where it started for me.

It’s interesting that you saw a mess and your reaction was: I love this, I want to keep working on it.

If you don’t have that passion, you won’t be able to get better. And the whole thing really does start with a problem.

Avslutning och fråga till näste gäst

What question would you pass to the next guest?

What’s the most surprising integration mess you’ve come across in your career, and what did you learn from it?

Thank you so much, Mimmi, for joining us on a Friday — and we really hope to have you back again.

Thank you for having me. Definitely — we should make that happen.