Weather Forecast for Your Information Technology: Partly Cloudy

Gartner recently released the Who’s Who of Integration Platform as a Service[i], listing stand-alone iPaaS service provider offerings to consider. This document also effectively takes the pulse of the iPaas market through the perspective of the SaaS and Cloud markets.

iPaaS Provides a New Way to Look at Integration

Gartner analysts say this: “to attract users immediately, one of the goals of Cloud Bus is to simplify the adoption of popular SaaS applications by enabling users to integrate them with on-premises applications without having to build connectors.” [i]

Interestingly, Gartner shares business benefits and cautions of iPaaS adoption: “iPaaS can help them reduce time to integration and move toward an operational expenditure model of funding integration technology acquisitions. Focus on the suitability of an iPaaS offering for your specific use cases. Although you could lower integration costs via iPaaS, this shouldn’t necessarily be your primary adoption driver.”[i]

A great article by Forrester’s James Staten, “Don’t move your applications to the Cloud,”[ii] echoes the feedback cloud initiatives often receive. Yes, the cloud often allows a reduction of some costs, but that is neither always true nor should it be billed as one of the major benefits of cloud initiatives. This highlights the importance of the subscription structure proposed by your iPaaS provider. A  successful structure must be simple yet relative to your integration usage.

Rapid SaaS Adoption

According to Gartner, “Use of iPaaS is rapidly expanding from small or midsize businesses (SMBs), to large organizations.”[i] Over the last few years, large companies have adopted SaaS applications in just a few months, instead of launching massive ERP programs slated to deliver ROI years after implementation. But, will companies completely replace their on-premise applications with cloud applications? Stefan Ried tell us no in his latest (and great) research report[iii], “10 Myths and Realities of the Software Market in 2013.” Companies are mostly utilizing SaaS applications to complement existing applications. “The future will be hybrid,” says Ried,  which will allow mature integration to be a part of any company’s roadmap. iPaaS solutions conveniently provide ready-made integration packs that work with SaaS applications and on-premise applications to support the growing number of “Cloud to Ground” scenarios.

Companies are beginning to use iPaaS solutions for exposing REST APIs to be consumed by internal applications, business partners, and mobile applications. This makes the ability of iPaaS to integrate data in real time an absolute requirement.

However, that does not mean every company needs iPaaS, or that iPaaS is the solution to all integration challenges. Gartner says, “Define your iPaaS strategy in the context of your CSI requirements. But ensure you also consider other use cases, including on-premises integration projects that emphasize integration developers’ productivity or time to integration.”i

As an example, some companies may rate developer productivity or time to integration higher than cost reduction. Two key points provided by Ried prove that SaaS applications are not the only direction companies are headed. First, companies spend more on custom development than applications—mostly to sustain or build competitive advantage. Second, Ried predicts that the next generation of cloud solutions will provide more industry-specific processes. Innovation will be fueled by a company’s ability to combine existing applications with new ones, commoditize, and create custom applications. Integration is the foundation of this innovation.

Start integrating your SaaS apps and Social networks with your on-premises apps. Evaluate Cloud Bus today.