iPaaS or EiPaaS; Necessity or Hype?
Recently, Gartner again published its Magic Quadrant on iPaaS/EiPaaS solutions. This publication is full of ICT terms and jargon explaining why these solutions are strategically important and which of them are worth considering.
What is iPaaS or EiPaaS?
iPaas or EiPaaS stands for (Enterprise) integration Platform as a Service. The key word here is ‘integration’ because that iPaaS or EiPaaS stands for (Enterprise) Integration Platform as a Service. The key word here is ‘integration’ because that is exactly what these products do: they provide a solution to digital integration issues between your own applications (both on-premise and in the cloud) and between your applications and third-party applications or data, such as partners, suppliers or the government.
The Problem
In recent decades, companies, organisations and governments have purchased and implemented applications and systems en masse. Often, important data such as customer information, personnel data, contracts and invoices were stored in multiple systems simply because it was the easiest way for the suppliers.
This led to problems because the same data had to be entered and maintained in multiple systems, causing errors, complicating reporting and creating multiple versions of ‘the truth’. This is inefficient, costly and causes a range of problems. Different protocols, old and new applications and preferably not too complicated.
Solving ICT Problems with ICT
All kinds of ICT techniques (such as ESB, data extractions and integration protocols) have been and are being used to address these problems. But with the continuous acquisition of new (cloud) systems, company takeovers and mergers or splits of municipalities and governments, integration has become crucial for many organisations.
Why is Digital Integration Important?
Customers, citizens, partners and, of course, their own employees have high expectations. For example, companies have a value chain consisting of a webshop, external suppliers, a third party for payments and a carrier offered as a Cloud service. Customers want one app with which they can order, pay and track their delivery. Companies want to outsource business as efficiently as possible without the customer noticing. Citizens want one portal where municipalities, ministries and other government agencies bring their data together. Students want one app that combines timetable information, learning resources, results and assessments from different sources.
In all these cases, connections/integrations/links are needed that ensure this can be done securely, easily, verifiably and quickly. With support for hybrid environments (on-premise and cloud), different protocols and applications.
The Complexity of iPaaS
Organisations are faced with requests to build hundreds of integrations. These integrations must support not only older and modern network or interface protocols, but also different data formats, hybrid platforms and both internal and external users. Moreover, they must be maintainable, stable and secure. Several iPaaS vendors have developed solutions that make this possible. These solutions promise a single platform where all integrations, links and interfaces are brought together.
Modern iPaaS Solutions
Modern iPaaS solutions are complex and require experts to manage everything, including high availability, disaster recovery, security, technical management and tuning SLAs. End-users or citizen developers also need to be able to build complex integration scenarios with these solutions.
Integration strategy vs Product choice
No iPaaS solution is the same. Some platforms target legacy environments, while others focus more on business users with a user-friendly interface. There are iPaaS solutions that can only be purchased as a service, while others are offered as stand-alone solutions. The most important thing is that an iPaaS solution supports your integration strategy, not that your integration strategy is based on an iPaaS platform.
When reading a Gartner Magic Quadrant, many organisations are quick to focus on all kinds of things except their own strategy. Before you even start reading a Magic Quadrant, there are important strategic decisions to be made on things like strategy and architecture. Integration challenges can be solved in different ways and you need to decide which one best suits your organisation:
- Self-procure and manage an iPaaS solution: Your certified staff handles the design, build, management and security of integrations.
- iPaaS solution through a partner: Leave management to specialists so your staff can focus on designing and building integrations.
- Purchasing integrations as a service: Your integration strategy focuses on providing integrations quickly and efficiently without worrying about management, security or staffing issues.
Conclusion
An integration strategy is more important than product selection. The importance of digital integrations is increasing, so you need to ensure you have an agile organization that is able to respond quickly to new business initiatives. Talk to our specialists to see together what is the best integration solution for your organization. Our specialists have years of experience with large integration projects, with or without an iPaaS environment and can advise and assist you.