What is an iPaaS?

It’s a global enterprise software market that reportedly going to be worth US$10.2 billion by 2023. So what is iPaaS and where did it come from?

Introduction

Integration Platform-as-a-Service (ipaas) is a computing platform that equips enterprises with the ability to orchestrate machine-to-machine automations on-demand, usually employing codeless drag-and-drop tooling (most notable iPaaS examples include Encanvas, Redhat iPaaS and Mendix). Digital transformation projects often rely on a iPaaS technology ecosystem to design and deploy applications to automate back-office processes and streamline the customer experience.

Gartner defines iPaaS as – ‘ a suite of cloud services enabling development, execution, and governance of integration flows connecting any combination of on-premises and cloud-based processes, services, applications and data within individual or across multiple organizations. Gartner prefers to describe this market as ‘Integration software as a service (iSaaS)’ – packages that are cloud-based integration tools providing either prepackaged or easily configurable integration flows aimed at helping non-IT business users and even consumers to address simple application and data integration issues.

The role of iPaaS

Against a background of digital transformations, IT leaders need to focus on revamping enterprise integration strategy, which will invariably involve the aggregation and management of data from a variety of computing platforms and applications. iPaaS solutions supply the necessary glue ware to easily design, deploy and operate machine-to-machine workflows. They offer simple deployment and operational flexibility at a lower cost of ownership to satisfy a broad range of data integration needs. Integration specialists like NDMC Consulting use iPaaS integration platforms to implement digital transformations in enterprise-scale businesses.

iPaaS vs iSaaS

The term iPaaS should not be confused with independent Software as a Service (iSaaS) solutions. While a platform-as-a-service provisions the tooling needed to design, deploy and use applications, software-as-a-service solutions are the apps themselves, provisioned by software companies as a turnkey solution to fit a specific use case, task or automation.

ipaas helps to create a complete single-version-of-the-truth

An important business driver for integration services comes from the desire of executives to harvest data from across their enterprise in order to make informed decisions. The drive towards a data-driven culture demands that systems connect to one another. The integrity of data executives review, is a major sticking point.

A survey of 442 business executives around the world by Harvard Business Review found that corporate decision-makers have major concerns about access to, availability of, and quality of internal and outside data. The result is reduced confidence in their decision-making ability.

Moreover, nearly half of the global respondents said their lack of confidence stems from a lack of information or easy access to data. The findings are puzzling given the emergence of big data techniques, the proliferation of global networks and the sheer processing power contained even in mobile devices.

One reason for the disconnect between big data and decision-making, the Harvard researchers found, is that “silos of data, typically imprisoned in customer, financial, or production systems, are frequently inaccessible by individuals outside the functional group.”

In this regard:

43% of survey respondents said important external or internal data was missing
42% said data was inaccurate or obsolete, and;
33% said they “couldn’t process information fast enough.

Deployment model agnostic

Generally, iPaaS solutions are “deployment-model-agnostic” and offer integration capabilities irrespective of how the enterprise computing architecture has been modelled – be it on-premises and cloud deployments or as containerized middleware.

Hybrid integration platform vs iPaaS

While iPaaS solutions are the most popular because of their rapid deployment, many businesses will choose instead to build their own hybrid solutions by bringing together a mix of third-party products and crafting their own solutions to mimic the capabilities that iPaaS solutions deliver out-of-the-box.

Market size

Cloud-based hybrid integration (and hybrid integration platforms like ipaas) is expected to account for at least 50 percent of new spend on middleware by the end of 2019 (not counting upgrades or license renewals on existing on-premise middleware).

In a recent Ovum report, Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Cloud Platform for Hybrid Integration Vendor, 2019–20, they suggest the global iPaaS market will grow at a 59.7 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2018 and 2023, to US$10.2 billion.

Key capabilities of iPaaS solutions

Buyers would expect any iPaaS solution to offer:

Applications design, deployment, operation, maintenance (including management of platform upgrades)
Self-service
Platform agnostic
Rich portfolio of codeless data connections
Simple resource pooling
Rapid elasticity
Measured service
Data security, safeguarding measures and governance

Features of iPaaS systems

The key characteristics of a hybrid integration platform include:

An easy-to-learn self-service integrations platform offering a codeless approach to integration
Flexible deployment options such as on-premises deployment, public/private/hybrid cloud
A cockpit offering centralized administration and governance
Support for a range of data connections with uniformity in the UX across the platform, the underlying infrastructure and enabling technologies
Excellent re-use of authored components
Rapid deployment
Productivity tools, such as a “drag-and-drop” approach to integration-flow development with prebuilt actions, connectors and templates

Key players in the iPaaS market

In addition to encanvas, iPaaS examples include:
Boomi
SnapLogic
TIBCO Software Inc.
Informatica Corporation
MuleSoft, Inc.
Fujitsu Ltd.
IBM Corporation
Microsoft Corp.
Moskitos
Adaptris
Oracle Corporation
Red Hat Inc.
Capgemini SE
SAP SE
Dell Inc.
Seeburger
WS02
Axway

About Encanvas

Encanvas is an enterprise software company that specializes in iPaaS solutions and helping businesses to create above and beyond customer experiences.

From Low Code to Codeless

Better than code-lite and low-code, we created the first no code (codeless) enterprise application platform to release creative minds from the torture of having to code or script applications.

Live Wireframe

Use Encanvas in your software development lifecycle to remove the barrier between IT and the business. Coding and scripting is the biggest reason why software development has been traditionally unpredictable, costly and unable to produce best-fit software results. Encanvas uniquely automates coding and scripting. Our live wireframing approach means that business analysts can create the apps you need in workshops, working across the desk with users and stakeholders.

AppFabric

When it comes to creating apps to create a data culture and orchestrate your business model, there’s no simpler way to instal and operate your enterprise software platform than AppFabric. Every application you create on AppFabric adds yet more data to your single-version-of-the-truth data insights. That’s because, we’ve designed AppFabric to create awesome enterprise apps that use a common data management substrate, so you can architect and implement an enterprise master data management plan.

Customer Data Platform

Encanvas supplies a private-cloud Customer Data Platform that equips businesses with the means to harvest their customer and commercial data from all sources, cleanse and organize it, and provide tooling to leverage its fullest value in a secure, regulated way. We provide a retrofittable solution that bridges across existing data repositories and cleanses and organizes data to present a useful data source. Then it goes on to make data available 24×7 in a regulated way to authorized internal stakeholders and third parties to ensure adherence to data protection and FCA regulatory standards.

Encanvas Secure&Live

Encanvas Secure and Live (‘Secure&Live’) is a High-Productivity application Platform-as-a-Service. It’s an enterprise applications software platform that equips businesses with the tools they need to design, deploy applications at low cost. It achieves this by removing coding and scripting tasks and the overheads of programming applications. Unlike its rivals, Encanvas Secure&Live is completely codeless (not just Low-Code), so it removes the barriers between IT and the business. Today, you just need to know that it’s the fastest (and safest) way to design, deploy and operate enterprise applications.

Learn more by visiting www.encanvas.com.

The Author

Erica Tomlin is a senior consultant specializing in helping organizational leadership teams to grow by implementing enterprise software platforms that improve data visibility, process agility; and organizational learning – creating an enterprise that learns and adapts faster. She writes on subjects of change management, organizational design, rapid development applications software, and data science. She can be contacted via her LinkedIn profile.