What is iPaaS? Integration Platform as a Service Explained

Throughout the history of IT, new technologies have necessitated new software architectures. Almost like clockwork, every decade brings a new trend that has ushered in a new architecture for the enterprise. As a result, the structure of business systems is again undergoing a shift.

The emerging IT software stack has three layers, each delivered on-demand as a cloud service:

Application software. This provides the user-facing applications that enable business (e.g., Salesforce). The first to emerge, the CRM market moved from a large and complex on-premises deployment to a cloud-based service at an unexpectedly rapid pace. By the end of the decade, emerging SaaS offerings existed for almost every type of application with new competitors emerging every day.

A virtualized environment on which systems can be deployed. This provides the underlying computing resources for the deployment of enterprise systems (e.g., Amazon Web Services, Rackspace). The rise of new technologies such as virtualization allowed shared data centers to achieve higher rates of resource utilization while offering dynamic expandability capacity and an avoidance of upfront capital outlays.

Application infrastructure, both for the development of single applications and integration between multiple applications. The middleware that enables the development of advanced applications. Platform as a service is a category of cloud computing that offers a framework and an environment to allow developers to build applications and services atop it. Offerings such as Force.com, Google App Engine, and Microsoft Azure have begun to get some early adoption. PaaS forms the foundation upon which many of today’s most popular SaaS applications have been built.

As IaaS and SaaS emerged and rapidly became a mainstay of many corporate IT environments, the only missing piece of the software stack was the platform layer. The need to address this essential middle layer is central to the next step in the evolution of cloud services. The piece of the puzzle that remained missing was a way to integrate across applications, which is the genesis of the “cloud silos” problem that iPaaS was created to solve.

As companies move their applications en masse to the cloud, they're hitting a major roadblock to success — namely, integration. While organizations have spent the last 15 years integrating their enterprise applications to break down silos of information, there is now a renewed problem of "cloud silos." With little to no barrier of entry in adopting SaaS, companies are deploying numerous SaaS applications without IT involvement, resulting in hundreds of services unable to communicate seamlessly.

While custom point-to-point integration code has worked in the past to stitch applications together, companies quickly realized the need for a more flexible and modern approach. Today’s enterprise has on-premises applications, cloud services, and social platforms – all which need to connect seamlessly. This new set of integration problems requires a new platform for solving them.

To overcome confusion and ensure a successful platform, strategic IT departments need to carefully evaluate iPaaS offerings based on distinct characteristics and requirements.

A strong iPaaS offering must enable rapid development and broad connection capabilities:

• Integrated Development Environment (IDE): The platform should be easy to use and navigate, commonly accomplished by an IDE that provides a visual interface for creating and managing integration flows. Well-suited IDEs provide drag-and-drop features that can empower non-technical resources to complete standard integration tasks. Developers must also be able to use familiar tools and processes to build and configure integration-style applications.
• Pre-built Connectivity: A robust set of connectors for SaaS and cloud services is required for today’s enterprise, allowing companies to create integrations quickly and saving developer time. An advanced platform will also offer packaged, end-to-end integrations for common integration challenges (e.g., hire-to-payroll process).

Open Solution: In contrast to inflexible "black box" SaaS integration tools, an iPaaS should be open enough that integration solutions can be built and customized. As a central component, it is necessary that the iPaaS is an open source solution that abides by global standards, helping companies avoid vendor lock-in.

• Secure Data Gateway: A primary concern for cloud-based integration is enterprise security between on-premises and cloud apps. An iPaaS offering must be able to transfer data in a secure fashion without custom coding. A platform with a secure gateway enables behind-the-firewall access to secure data without exposing the on-site infrastructure to unnecessary risks.
• Hybrid Architecture Support: Most organizations will have a mix of on-premises and cloud-based assets. The ability to connect legacy systems and cloud applications is vital to support on-premises and cloud integration in a hybrid architecture.

An iPaaS needs to be a true platform, and not simply a collection of hosted integration tools. Providing further definition and specificity, Gartner outlines a number of key functions in its reference model, which reinforce the need for robust core capabilities:

• A True Platform: A strong offering requires no maintenance, provides a SaaS-aligned delivery model, and takes advantage of the elasticity of the cloud. It must be based on a robust core integration engine and be highly available, reliable, and secure.
• Management and Governance: The platform should provide powerful tools that support the management and monitoring of application flows, along with essential governance controls. This is critical to understanding the performance of applications and providing auditing and alerts.
• Essential Cloud Features: These include tools and technologies that support the execution of integration flows, the development and lifecycle management of integrations, along with essential cloud features such as multitenancy, elasticity, and self-provisioning.

iPaaS is emerging as the next-generation integration technology, providing the last essential component to realizing the benefits of a cloud architecture. It represents a major improvement over custom point-to-point integration solutions.

For developers and systems integrators, an iPaaS can eliminate the most time-consuming and repetitive part of client implementations: integration with other systems. Organizations that use these solutions avoid the maintenance costs and headaches associated with “spaghetti architecture,” as the platform offers tested, reliable, and supported connectors and integration templates. Integrators can deliver business value to clients faster, rather than wasting time writing custom code. Developers can be up and running in hours.

The platform is architected with ultimate high availability and reliability in mind. It provides visibility and control into the integration performance, and the integration itself can easily scale and change with business demand. It must allow for seamless and transparent ramp-up of more capacity as the demand grows. End-users get the full benefits of the cloud, including elasticity to scale with demand.

Industry Context: The drive toward global, highly available cloud integration led to market innovations like CloudHub, which was introduced as the world's first global iPaaS offering. Such products emphasize a fully cloud-based solution that enables customers to take advantage of the economics and elasticity of the cloud for their integration infrastructure.

By fully leveraging the economics of the cloud for integration infrastructure, an iPaaS offers the convenience of self-service sign-up and provisioning, and a cost-effective pay-as-you-grow model. It also provides multi-tenant isolation for data security and integrity.

The iPaaS model, while securing its place in the IT landscape, is still in its early stages. Gartner points out that current offerings may not include all the features in its reference model, leading to different focuses among vendors.

Depending on the particular integration needs of an enterprise, some vendor options may be a better fit than others. Gartner identifies three categories of iPaaS vendors, each of which emphasizes a different area of integration:

1. E-commerce and B2B Integration: These offerings provide simple solutions that quickly connect partner applications and cloud services, often serving short-term integration needs.
2. Cloud Integration: Focused on connecting cloud services with one another.
3. Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Infrastructure: Vendors with a background here offer the most balanced and robust set of capabilities for long-term integration and governance projects.

Given the growing shift toward hybrid architectures, it is a smart move to begin thinking about long-term integration strategies to support computing models that include both on-premises resources and cloud services.

While the evolution from on-premises IT architectures toward a hybrid model will not be immediate, businesses need to begin the transition process today. Offerings from vendors with expertise in ESB and SOA are often best positioned to tackle systematic integration for the cloud era, offering a framework and environment for integration specialists to build integration applications. The integration platform must be future-proof and API ready, so as to easily adapt to the changing ecosystem and grow with changing business needs. iPaaS will provide the last essential component to realizing the benefits of a cloud architecture.