Integration, as a market, has traditionally been loosely defined and often associated with current IT challenges. In the mainframe era, integration was primarily defined by the challenge of getting data into and out of mainframe systems. In the client server era, integration was referred to creating “data buses” that exchanged objects between different enterprise systems.
Future Integration Looks Different
In the future, integration will be defined by the challenges of exchanging data between cloud-based SaaS services, a myriad of “things” using loosely coupled APIs, and web-based architectures inside and outside of the firewall. The sheer entropy and variety of the emerging ecosystem ensures that integration within the ecosystem is far more valuable than the individual parts of the ecosystem. In other words, just like how “software is eating the world,” “integration is eating software.”
Productivity Shift
Traditionally, each leap in computing architecture causes a shift in toolset capability and an evolution in the productivity of the technologists. Arguably, integration in this new world will provide a productivity shift that is far more than that provided by SQL databases that ushered in the client server era. The toolset capability in this generation will focus on ease of use, consumability, and the evolution of a vibrant ecosystem.
Integration is eating software.
