The modern technological world is rapidly transforming through cutting-edge innovations that aid in enhancing the performance of our businesses. iPaaS is yet another such innovative service which serves as a platform to connect systems, that were otherwise disjointed, for the purpose of delivering unified solutions to clients. iPaaS is the abbreviation for Integration Platform as a Service. It is a cloud-based platform and is used to connect different systems, technologies and applications within a cloud or on-premise. iPaaS acts as a connection for communication among multiple systems and enables data sharing and integration. With an increase in cloud dependency, iPaaS has assumed an integral role in almost every business model by enabling platforms to have unlimited potential. It ensures integration flows’ deployment as well as maintenance without any requirement for middleware or hardware between a business and a 3rd party software or within the business.
iPaaS lets clients develop as well as execute and monitor integration flows among various applications. It makes it possible for organizations to attain integration without having to invest in any licensed middleware software or relevant skills. iPaaS provides an effective solution for improving communication among different silos through the integration of software in order to ensure better sharing of data within a business. It also enables a business to expand its offering without having to build additional services.
Tools and services are combined into an SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) in iPaaS solutions. In such an architecture the software, data, operations and infrastructure interact in an ecosystem which is extremely responsive. This enables businesses to share information and resources across applications, ensures swifter improvements as well as delivers products to market much more quickly as compared to the time when a cloud integration platform wasn’t being utilized.
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Important Features of iPaaS
The most important features of iPaaS are its ability to create easily custom connectors, choreograph easily service interactions, deliver configurable workflow triggers as well as powerful set of pre-built connectors, ensure robust functionality with regard to data mapping and seamless integration with API management. The four main features of iPaaS include virtual infrastructure that is easy to manage, application development along with its continuous delivery, data warehousing and integration along with providing critical data security.
Every iPaaS solution should have certain capabilities. These include- application connectors for SaaS (Software as a Service) and for on-premises packaged applications, connectors that have to do with communication protocol, such as FTP, HTTP etc., data formats, data standards, data transformation, routing and orchestration along with integration life cycle management tool and integration flow operational monitoring.
Characteristics of iPaaS
The main characteristics of iPaaS have to do with its ability to provide all the benefits of the Cloud, along with its ability to be application and end-point agnostic. Moreover, it should have a distributed architecture, should not be code-heavy, should ensure data synchronization along with access to high-quality data all the time from anywhere.
Benefits of iPaaS for Organizations
Due to the popularity, availability and reliability of the Cloud, it is not unusual to find businesses that are built totally on Integration Platform as a Service. iPaaS offerings can be used to design even a network in the Cloud. The major ways in which iPaaS can benefit businesses are as follows-
By enabling B2B data exchanges which ensure secure data flows within partner networks. This does away with the requirement to write API-based code along with enhancing the speed with regard to the process of onboarding partners and customers.
By allowing self-service data preparation in which integration flows are included. It enables the creation of processes that have to do with reusable data preparation and which deliver data to BI tool and self-service analytics.
By providing sales lead-management functions which gather information and integrate it quickly into a Content Management System.
By utilizing Cloud technologies for streamlining integration flows that are complex, enhancing efficiencies along with improved resource management and ensuring a reduction in costs.
By delivering embedded integration offerings for enabling the management of data synchronization.
The main benefits delivered by Integration Platform as a Service include cost-efficiency, support with regard to low-code development, providing outstanding customer experience, removing restrictions in architectural and licensing models, enhancing productivity and decision making, offering updates that are automatic, reliable and regular, along with securing gateways as well as providing scalability, speed and flexibility and ensuring better alignment between sales and marketing. Moreover, iPaaS simplifies software multitenancy.
Software multitenancy enables a single instance to use resource sharing on an iPaaS which helps to cater to tenants globally. A single point with regard to updates and changes is provided by a single instance. This does away with the need for huge enterprise rollouts for minor changes. Network overheads can be reduced significantly through multitenancy along with ensuring a reduction in overall ownership costs.
Conclusion
iPaaS as a managed solution for developing, hosting and integrating cloud applications and data includes graphic tools that are easy to use. It provides data warehousing, infrastructure, application design along with DevOps environments. An appropriate iPaaS solution simplifies the integration of applications, data, business compliance along with security.
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