Organizations can leverage a wide variety of cloud-based services today, and one of the fastest growing offerings is integration platform as a service. But what is iPaaS?
There are two major categories of iPaaS solutions available, focusing on application integration and data integration. Application integration works at the API level, typically involves relatively low volumes of messages, and enables multiple SaaS applications to be woven together.
Integration platform as a service for data enables organizations to develop, execute, monitor, and govern integration across disparate data sources and targets, both on-premises and in the cloud, with processing and enrichment of the data as its streaming.
Within the scope of iPaaS for data there are older batch offerings, and more modern real-time streaming solutions. The latter are better suited to the on-demand and continuous way organizations are utilizing cloud resources.
Streaming data iPaaS solutions facilitate integration through intuitive UIs, by providing pre-configured connectors, automated operators, wizards and visualization tools to facilitate creation of data pipelines for real-time integration. With the iPaaS model, companies can develop and deploy the integrations they need without having to install or manage additional hardware or middleware, or acquire specific skills related to data integration. This can result in significant cost savings and accelerated deployment.
This is particularly useful as enterprise-scale cloud adoption becomes more prevalent, and organizations are required to integrate on-premises data and cloud data in real time to serve the company’s analytics and operational needs.
Factors such as increasing awareness of the benefits of iPaaS among enterprises – including reduced cost of ownership and operational optimization – are fueling the growth of the market worldwide.
For example, a report by Markets and Markets notes that the Integration Platform as a Service market is estimated to grow from $528 million in 2016 to nearly $3 billion by 2021, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 42% during the forecast period.
“The iPaaS market is booming as enterprises [embrace] hybrid and multi-cloud strategies to reduce cost and optimize workload performance” across on-premises and cloud infrastructure, the report says. Organizations around the world are adopting iPaaS and considering the deployment model an important enabler for their future, the study says.
Research firm Gartner, Inc. notes that the enterprise iPaaS market is an increasingly attractive space due to the need for users to integrate multi-cloud data and applications, with various on-premises assets. The firm expects the market to continue to achieve high growth rates over the next several years.
By 2021, enterprise iPaaS will be the largest market segment in application middleware, Gartner says, potentially consuming the traditional software delivery model along the way.
“iPaaS is a key building block for creating platforms that disrupt traditional integration markets, due to a faster time-to-value proposition,” Gartner states.
The Striim platform can be deployed on-premises, but is also available as an iPaaS solution on Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and Amazon Web Services. This solution can integrate with on-premise data through a secure agent installation. For more information, we invite you to schedule a demo with one of our lead technologists, or download the Striim platform.
