There is no debate that software-as-a-service (SaaS) has experienced significant market growth over the past five years. Gartner and Forbes project increased growth of up to 30 percent through 2018. Current revenue metrics support those figures thus far in 2015:
As a result of this growth in the SaaS market, most companies will soon develop the business need to connect with cloud-based applications. Integration needs have expanded from traditional, on-premises B2B applications to include a wide variety of data sources: mobile devices, real-time feeds and unstructured data sets from cloud and hybrid endpoints. These new demands have redefined how we think about integration interfaces and APIs, as well as the tools we choose to build, maintain and monitor them.
Companies now find themselves trying to balance legacy and custom applications already on-premises, with the rise of social media applications and the explosive growth of mobile device usage. Despite the technical challenges, having real-time access to synchronized customer data across all of these systems is a necessity. Cloud-enabled integration platforms (CEIP) will rise to the occasion to meet consumer demand and the technical requirements of Cloud-enabled Applications and on-premises legacy systems.
Internal IT Departments will most likely not be involved in the development work. Gartner reports that within large organizations, at least 65% of new integration flows will be developed outside the control of IT departments by 2017. This would imply most companies will choose a consulting partner to help navigate, develop and execute their cloud strategy.
As a result of these factors and the momentum of cloud services, the future of integration development is morphing into a hybrid model made up of on-premises and cloud platforms. Gartner defines Integration platform-as-a-service as a form of platform as a service (PaaS) that provides capabilities to enable subscribers (usually referred to as “tenants”) to implement integration projects involving any combination of cloud-resident and on-premises endpoints — data sources, applications, services (in the service-oriented architecture [SOA] sense of the word), APIs and processes. Integration platform-as-as-service (iPaaS) will bridge the gap between traditional integration platforms and PaaS-based applications leveraging rich cloud-enabled functionality. The building blocks of these future solutions will be as follows:
iPaaS Functionality (Gartner-Magic-Quadrant)
Support for a variety of connectivity protocols and message delivery styles
Data/Message mapping and transformation
Data quality
Routing and orchestration
Adapters for cloud-based and on-premises enterprise applications
Software agents to enable secure communications between on-premises systems and the iPaaS environment
Adapter developer toolkits or SDKs
Integration flow development and life cycle management tools
Integration flow management, administration and monitoring
API management
Reusable Integration templates
Cloudstreams (Pre-packaged integration flows)
Using iPaaS to address integration challenges
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When integrating applications with a cloud-based SaaS application like Salesforce or NetSuite, an iPaaS is a natural fit. For any of the typical business processes, the single-instance multi-tenant architecture of an iPaaS allows customers to quickly and easily share data between their on-premises and cloud applications, so companies can quickly bridge the gap and realize true business value from untapped data that has been hidden away in spreadsheets or burdened by overly manual processes.
With some iPaaS solutions, there’s no coding required and no appliances to install. Instead, the iPaaS vendor will manage and update the software and infrastructure, regularly distributing these updates to all customers at the same time, as part of a subscription. It’s an approach that provides scalability for enterprise companies seeking to future-proof their IT infrastructures, and allows faster integration and time to value while keeping costs predictable.
An iPaaS performs all integration development, management and monitoring in the cloud for centralized control. For deployment and integration execution, the integration process to share data among applications is packaged into a runtime engine that can be deployed in the cloud or on-premises, depending on a company’s security and latency considerations.
An iPaaS also offers flexibility. In more complex technical environments or those with several SaaS applications to integrate, an iPaaS allows a company to connect any combination of legacy on-premises applications to cloud-based applications. Or, use it to move data from on-premises applications to cloud-based applications in a migration scenario. The hybrid IT capabilities of a true iPaaS will support any mix of on-premises and cloud application integration — whether on-premises-to-on-premises, on-premises-to-cloud or cloud-to-cloud integration — even across core information systems, subsidiaries, regions and partners.
Gartner’s Magic Quadrant helps identify and categorize the “players” in the field with the following chart:
Tallan’s Differentiating Value Proposition
Tallan’s commitment to clients and prospects is to train, tailor and challenge our customers to take control of their interface development irrespective of platform providing an agnostic perspective of all platforms and helping our customers and prospect makes the right educated choice not only for right now but for the future.
We’ve pioneered integrations utilizing Dell Boomi’s AtomSphere to integrations in Azure utilizing BizTalk Services.
Tallan stands alone in leading platform independent Cloudstream development for EDI with our proprietary T-Connect EDI solution and tool set.
Integration Experts Tallan architects and builds secure integration solutions that keep your business processes loosely coupled and control the flow of data inside and outside of your organization. We take pride in providing the best practice standards and patterns for each client, and we prepare your internal staff to support the solutions we deliver. Our integration team has vast experience in multiple integration platforms in many industries—so you can leave your integration issues to us and get back to running your business.
Industry Focus Tallan integration experts bring technology and vertical industry experiences together. We have deep expertise in integration scenarios for many industries, including:
Healthcare (including HIPAA compliance)
Supply Chain
Retail
Financial Services (including SWIFT compliance)
Insurance
EDI
Cross-Platform Expertise Let Tallan customize a solution based on YOUR unique business needs. Our integration team is comprised of experts that focus on specific platforms to deliver solid, turn-key solutions. These platforms include:
Microsoft BizTalk
Microsoft Azure
Dell Boomi
Mulesoft
As always, If you have any questions or comments, or need assistance with any Integrations or development questions, please contact us at integrations@tallan.com.
Thank you, The Tallan Integrations Team