Integration - is it QA or not

During the past couple of weeks I've been involved knee deep in integrating between two of our system components.
On a personal note I do find it very interesting, since integration in it self does not follow all the strict QA methodology.
This in turn started me thinking as to whether or not we can consider Integration as part of QA.

On the Pro side:

• System is being tested for functionality against pre-defined input scenarios.
• Problems are reported to developers for fixes

On the Con side:

• There are no regression testing.
• there is no definition for test cycles/ version release cycles
• There won't necessary be official releases but rather temporary patches.

My final conclusion is that I do believe Integration can be classified as a "Testing Cycle" of some sort.

My only concern in this respect is the following.
a given fact is that early integration basically translates to non working product.
a separate time table must be allocated, and at least two weeks should be added to the regular time allocated for testing since this is roughly the amount of time required for the integration to yield a working product.

Only upon meeting these conditions will we be able to complete a real system testing and thus include in our test reports a Integration Cycle.