The rate of digital transformation is increasing, and iPaaS is one of the most recent trends. An iPaaS is a set of cloud services that enables the creation, governance, and execution of integration flows that include any mix of cloud-based or on-premises processes, apps, data, and services inside a single business or across many enterprises. Some medium to large-scale businesses have implemented an iPaaS solution, but acceptance among small businesses has been slower.
Today, iPaaS tools have evolved to assist enterprises in connecting their cloud apps with their on-premises applications. Of course, this is insufficient for modern enterprises, who demand something that is digitally native and agile, as well as easy enough for end-users and rich enough in capabilities to support AI and advanced workflows. Surprisingly, iPaaS technology has evolved to meet all of these commercial requirements. Read more on Cloud Computing and Services.
This blog seeks to help businesses that are afraid of the iPaaS concept by showing the iPaaS market’s growth as well as recent trends that are contributing to its greater adoption. Let’s start with a quick review of the iPaaS market.
Image Credits – Tibco
1. Innovation in Integration Scope
Exciting research is taking on in the field of iPaaS, which has huge benefits for businesses such as:
- Integrate Things: iPaaS solutions are gradually expanding with the goal of providing self-service functionality and integrating “things”. From a variety of devices, things can provide time-series data, activity tracking events, a wellness stream, and much more. Through specific protocols, iPaaS companies are expanding their offerings to handle the numerous connectivity challenges with ‘Things.’
- Integrate Service – DevOps: Companies are rapidly adopting microservice architecture, in which a large monolithic software stack is split down into several modular microservices, thanks to the extensive use of API and IoT designs. These modules can be used in a variety of container execution settings, including PaaS, IaaS, and on-premise deployments. iPaaS is evolving to include a container environment in addition to delivering common functionality as reusable services. The solution is planned to provide access to integration code and deployment APIs, allowing the team to integrate the apps into their existing DevOps infrastructure and automate deployment.
- Integrate BlockChain: Big businesses are investing in research to develop BaaS. Enterprises can benefit from a consortium or private blockchain, as well as exclusive contracts and a distributed ledger. Data governance and data quality are aided as a result of this. Since several iPaaS suppliers are studying BaaS technology, it is projected that enterprises will soon have the opportunity to integrate blockchain as an iPaaS function.
2. Connectivity is Everywhere
Previously, employees had to install all of the software they required to do their jobs on their own computers. However, things have changed recently. People can find the apps they need to do their work in a variety of places. As we all know, the iPaaS solution is critical to connecting this application. iPaaS would undoubtedly continue to meet the demand for dynamic and flexible connections.
3. Rise in Solutions for E-Commerce Integration
The advent of e-commerce in both B2C and B2B platforms has put pressure on firms to perform many tasks such as placing orders, online selling, inventory management, and so on. To integrate back-end processes, ERP systems, and e-commerce websites, iPaaS solutions will give a dedicated e-commerce integration solution. These integration technologies are expected to ensure free data flow between front-end and back-end systems while also lowering IT costs.
4. CRM and ERP, & Business/Analytics Intelligence integration
While businesses are increasingly embracing CRM systems to combine their customer service systems and contact databases, there is still a gap in CRM system integration with ERP, analytics, and business intelligence. These interfaces give businesses a 360-degree picture of their consumers, access to sensitive data, and the ability to automate business processes. iPaaS plans to release a single platform solution to combine these front-end and back-end technologies before the end of the year.
5. Integration Driven by Agility
Agility is becoming more important as firms deal with regular upgrades of systems, apps, and software. iPaaS adoption provides scalability, quality, and high velocity in addition to agility. Businesses may develop and execute microservice pipelines more easily because of the trend of agility-driven integration. This solution uses a shared messaging layer to connect loosely connected microservices and enable modern system integration.
6. AI/ML use cases in Integration Space
Machine learning and artificial intelligence and have now reached a new degree of application. NLP connects several predefined applications to extract data and generate relevant information using AI-driven voice commands or chatbots. The AI/ML-driven integration functionalities offered by iPaaS systems are depicted in the figure below. Read more on Artificial Intelligence.
The majority of the features listed above are regarded to be current iPaaS trends. Hoping they’re in the works and will be available sooner rather than later.
7. Chatbots and Mobile Integration
When it comes to iPaaS trends 2018, it is the most important thing to consider. Chatbots, which rely on spoken or written messages, are widely employed in e-commerce platforms. With the introduction of integration middleware, organizations can now link chatbots with their mobile apps and databases, allowing them to capture all essential information spread across the corporation with a single click. At the moment, these innovations provide great potential for businesses to better understand their customers and enhance m-commerce.
8. SaaS Marketplaces with Fully Integrated Applications
To provide more value to their consumers, communication service providers (CSPs) are always launching new apps with new capabilities. It’s critical that these new applications seamlessly interface with current ones, regardless of where they’re purchased — from a SaaS vendor or a cloud service provider. Businesses will see fully connected apps that offer integration layers under the SaaS landscape in 2018 and beyond to help CSPs improve client retention and experience.
Advantages and Disadvantages of IPaaS Services
1) Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services (IICS)
Informatica is a heavyweight in the business and an iPaaS pioneer. Informatica promotes its solution as a simple-to-use modular microservices platform for data management in the cloud, hybrid cloud, and on-premises environments.
Benefit
In Gartner’s 2019 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise iPaaS, Informatica is positioned as the industry leader. Informatica has also topped Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools for the past 14 years.
The ease of use, comprehensive functionality, a vast number of prebuilt integrations, adaptability, and robust user community all earned great accolades for the software. Informatica has also received positive feedback from users for its industry experience, great grasp of client demands, and overall customer satisfaction.
Drawback
Informatica is generally perceived as being more expensive than its competitors and more suited to enterprise implementations, according to users. The vast majority of users’ businesses were classified as large corporations.
Several consumers rated Informatica’s error messages as cryptic or difficult to interpret.
2) AtomSphere by Dell Boomi
Boomi is also another iPaaS industry leader and among the most experienced providers, successfully launched in 2000. Boomi was purchased by Dell in 2010. Integration, master data hub, B2B/electronic data exchange management, API administration, and flow are the five components of Boomi’s platform.
Benefit
Boomi came in second place to Informatica in Gartner’s 2019 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise iPaaS. Users praised the product’s ease of use, awarding it high grades in every category.
The platform’s ability to connect to a wide range of contexts, low-code/no-code connections, robust user community, and orientation have also earned good reviews.
Drawback
Many people have voiced their concern about the vendor’s pricing policy and overall costs. Boomi’s customer assistance and fault reporting and troubleshooting capabilities, according to some users, could be improved.
3) MuleSoft Anypoint
MuleSoft was formed in 2006, and Salesforce purchased it in 2018. The vendor is well-known for its great capabilities, and it frequently appears on shortlists of IPaaS vendor evaluations.
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Benefit
MuleSoft’s monitoring features, a vast selection of prebuilt connectors, general flexibility, API management, documentation, friendly user community, and ease of setup have all received positive feedback.
Drawback
The product’s costs have been a subject of concern among users. There are still some concerns among Salesforce users concerning the purchase and the product’s future path. Despite its positive evaluations for ease of installation, several customers have rated the equipment as more technically hard than competing products.
4) Jitterbit
Since 2003, Jitterbit has offered data integration solutions. Jitterbit has gained traction in corporate adoptions after initially being known for its application in small to medium businesses.
Benefit
Jitterbit outperformed its competitors in terms of pricing and value-to-cost ratios, according to Gartner. Furthermore, people adore the product for its customer support and service.
In Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Enterprise iPaaS, Jitterbit scored strongly in all assessment categories. Gartner and Forrester have consistently given the vendor high ratings, and it consistently outperforms competitors on forums like Gartner Peer Insights and TrustRadius.
Drawback
Jitterbit’s initial concentration on small to midsize businesses is seen by the industry as a possible source of concern for larger businesses. The majority of the reviews were from SMBs.
Conclusion
In addition to the iPaaS trends stated above, this platform is always being improved, with features such as self-service B2B, EAI, and ETI, a connector marketplace, support for multiple types of on-premise to an on-premise interface, create once, deploy many support abilities, and so on.
Overall, the iPaaS solution is ideally positioned to address next-generation integration difficulties, and the benefits of this solution much outweigh the drawbacks.