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Last year, Digibee released our first annual predictions for 2023. If you want to see how I did, here’s what I predicted 12 months ago. I’m excited to repeat that exercise in this blog post, as 2024 promises to be an exciting year for our customers and us at Digibee.
Johnson Brothers (JB), the 4th largest wholesaler and 3rd largest wine distributor in the US, manages over 27,000 unique alcohol products, each subject to different regulations, pricing structures, and distribution rules. JB partnered with Digibee and leveraged our cutting-edge technology to successfully tackle their integration challenges.
In the ever-evolving landscape of information technology, trends come and go. From the Y2K frenzy to the buzzword bonanza of big data, cloud computing and microservices, tech vendors often find themselves riding the same bandwagon, whether the solutions truly warrant the enthusiasm or not. Today, the wave we’re all surfing is Artificial Intelligence (AI). It seems like everyone has an AI marketing message, but how many are releasing features that genuinely deliver real value?
In this blog post, I’m going to share a preview of innovations we’re adding to the Digibee Integration Platform in 2024 – and connect the dots on how they support our commitment to empower all developers to build integrations that enable faster, better development cycles.
As you plan your development projects for 2024, I encourage you to read this blog while imagining how Digibee can empower you to meet and exceed your development timelines and objectives – and to unburden your development team to build and innovate.
>> Book a personalized demo with our team of experts and see how Digibee’s iPaaS will bring efficiency to your business.
For starters, let’s talk about what we mean when we say Digibee is the developer’s choice for integration.
Before Digibee, sophisticated integration use cases were the domain of a handful of legacy iPaaS solutions. These integrations require the work of specialized integration developers to build and maintain. In most organizations, this specialization creates a bottleneck and a backlog of development projects – as developers wait for integration work to be completed.
But there is a world of work that currently happens outside of the iPaaS platforms. Estimates show that a full two thirds of integrations are point to point, being completed by custom coding. So, these complex integrations aren’t being done by integration developers via iPaaS platforms or other integration tools. This coding time and effort should be avoidable, and it forces developers to do work that lacks both scale and governance.
Being the developer’s choice means delivering a platform for all developers to replace mundane coding and work that needs to be repeated. It means any developer can build sophisticated, enterprise use case integrations. It means all integrations can be built via a true iPaaS, leaving behind the hassles that come with writing, documenting and maintaining custom code.
As I mentioned above, there is no shortage of noise in the market about AI and its applications for the enterprise. I’m not being dismissive, there are some really interesting uses of AI and machine learning in play now – and many are being developed across a host of industries. My goal in this blog post is to be very specific on Digibee’s mission in this area and what it means for our customers.
Let me say first that Digibee has always been about abstracting away mundane tasks so developers can focus their time and effort on innovating and building, not integration-related coding. As the only enterprise-grade integration platform born in the cloud, Digibee’s containerized architecture means change management, scale, and reuse are core capabilities of the Digibee Integration Platform. That’s in our DNA, AI enablement or not.
Our product team is using AI to bolster this core mission of developer empowerment. You may have seen in June we introduced the Digibee AI assistant – a new capability in our customer training portal: the Digibee Academy 2.0. The technology is unique and AI-driven and tailored to answer questions in real-time from customers seeking information.
More recently, we introduced AI-based generator for documentation, as described in this KM World article:
“Despite its significance, creating detailed, clear integration documentation is rarely a simple, quick task. The manual documentation process is often wrought with inconsistencies, inaccuracies, and communication gaps that become more detrimental than originally intended, according to the vendor.
Digibee’s AI Generator for Pipeline Documentation is engineered to revolutionize this experience, reducing the time and effort spent on the manual production and management of pipeline documentation. This capability aims to deliver greater comprehension and clarity in the understanding of integration processes—for both technical and business users alike—through holistic pipeline analysis.”
This is the perfect example of how we’re using AI – to intelligently automate tasks that are both mundane and at risk of costly human error.
The releases being planned between now and mid-2024 carry on this same theme, including a truly differentiated debugging experience, a first of its kind tool to migrate integrations onto Digibee from legacy integration platforms, and a pipeline generator.
In terms of empowering development teams to focus on development and not integration, these AI-led enhancements are turbo charging our already powerful engine. The future is bright for our customers.
I highly encourage leaders of development and architecture teams to schedule a demo with Digibee and let us share our capabilities. We find more and more that our new customers are those running one of the legacy iPaaS platforms, seeking a way to burn down the backlog of development projects that complicated integrations are holding up. Tell us your plans and we’ll show how we can help!
In a recent blog post, we shared some of the interactions our team had with IT leaders and architects at the Gartner Symposium in October. One clear takeaway was the level of frustration experienced by users of legacy integration technology.
Working at Digibee, we sometimes get the opportunity to travel to events and interact with a broad range of people. As noted in previous posts, this is a really enjoyable part of the job. The recent Gartner Symposium in Florida was no exception.
Since we engage with people who are interested in evolving their integration strategies, many of the discussions focus on the inefficiencies of existing integration infrastructure and the need to modernize what isn’t working. Top of the list is the massive imbalance in resources required to simply maintain the status quo.
Inevitably, the conversation shifts to what could be achieved if these resources were liberated. Instead of talking about what isn’t working, we focus on innovation. When the enterprise is able to redirect finite development talent to unlock business potential, the sky is truly the limit.
>> Book a personalized demo with our team of experts and see how Digibee’s iPaaS will bring efficiency to your business.
Based on input from Digibee customers and the industry overall, it’s not uncommon for integration work to consume a significant portion of a company’s IT budget.
In the 2023 Digibee State of Enterprise Integration report, the majority of survey respondents indicated that up to 25% of their IT budget is spent on integration. And it’s not uncommon to see enterprises spending much more.
Marfrig, an international food company and a new customer for Digibee, was shocked to see that they were investing 40%-50% of developer budget on integrations. The company wanted to rein in these costs and redirect resources to higher value work, key considerations in Marfrig’s decision to move to Digibee.
“Every time we wanted to build a new project, we had to evaluate the budget. I was shocked to see after looking at the breakdown, 40%-50% of the developer budget was being spent on integrations, not on the core business. We knew that needed to change, which led us to Digibee.”
Joel Santiago,
Diretor de TI América do Sul – CIO, Marfrig
Along with a significant allocation of resources, the integration budget must also fund maintenance and training. With traditional integration solutions this adds up quickly. In the Digibee report, survey respondents indicate that almost 40% of their integration budget is spent in these areas.
One discussion from the Symposium was with the head of applications development at an industry-leading workspace products company.
The business relies on a team of 10 developers trained on the traditional integration solution that’s been in place for years. Although this represents one of the largest dedicated groups within IT, the team is unable to keep up with demands from the organization. The result? A chronic backlog of IT initiatives. Important innovation tracks are in stasis as developers invest all of their time maintaining the existing system.
We explored the Digibee value proposition where every developer is empowered to integrate, distributing the workload across the entire team. Instead of placing all of the pressure on a subset of resources, Digibee makes light work with many hands.
Even the most junior developers contribute, freeing up senior developers to focus on higher value work that supports the future success of the business.
So where would business leaders dedicate repurposed integration resources if they had their way? Based on my discussions at Symposium, and backed up by the Spiceworks State of IT 2024 study, IT budget investment priorities tend to include:
None of these initiatives are possible without software developers and engineers to carry out the work. With traditional integration solutions, a large swathe of a company’s IT resources are unable to focus on innovation. With Digibee, your entire team is enabled.
Digibee is dedicated to helping organizations succeed in their transition to a contemporary integration strategy. Our iPaaS technology liberates developers from mindless maintenance tasks, redirecting these valuable resources to focus on the highest value projects that benefit the business.
Along with extending your existing resource base to do more, our all-in-one pricing model includes maintenance and support at no extra charge. With Digibee, you free up resources and IT budget, ensuring the business is able to advance the truly important work.
For a deep dive into enterprise integration today and into the future, download a free copy of the Digibee 2023 State of Enterprise Integration report.
If you have an integration story you’d like to share or you’re in the midst of a project you’d like to discuss, please contact us. If you’re interested in more information about Digibee, visit our website or, if you prefer, schedule a demo.
EVENT: Digibee’s Foundations Workshops
WHEN: Enrollees will be notified of upcoming classes.
WHERE: Online
HOW ENROLL: Enroll here through Digibee Academy
Digibee’s Foundations Workshop is an initiative aiming to expand the knowledge of our users in more complex integration contexts, such as internal IT challenges or external challenges with partners of your business ecosystem.
During this introductory instructor-led training, customers can get familiar with the fundamental concepts of the Digibee Integration Platform: build your first pipeline and deploy your first integration during the class. This 3-hour session allows users to acquire practical knowledge and be more prepared to develop their integration pipelines.
Gartner® recently published interesting research titled Integration Platform Pricing Evaluation for Software Engineering Leaders. It’s a well-written overview of how integration platform pricing and licensing models are currently structured, and all the variables that organizations need to think through to navigate this complex set of buying decisions.
Digibee has conducted similar research into the complicated pricing models used by legacy integration technology platforms such as MuleSoft. If the MuleSoft pricing model reflects the standard for traditional integration products, then the Gartner research will be very helpful to organizations burdened with (or about to invest in) these solutions.
Platform pricing is a complicated topic, with users required to navigate extremely complex pricing models that use a variety of metrics. For example, vCore, per seat or per user, endpoint connections, network load, instance based capacity, etc. In turn, these may be charged by tier, usage, and volume–all potential factors in determining the costs of different integration platforms.
According to the Digibee State of Enterprise Integration report in 2023, there are additional costs of maintenance and training, which consume almost 40% of integration budgets. There is a whole world of cost and complexity beyond just licensing.
>> Book a personalized demo with our team of experts and see how Digibee’s iPaaS will bring efficiency to your business.
Gartner does a great job laying out the complexities of pricing for various technology models, and we can certainly vouch that most legacy enterprise integration vendors fit this bill.
When planning to obtain a new technology solution, we believe that software engineering and development leaders should be focusing on technology requirements, features, functionality and desired outcomes. Comparing pricing shouldn’t be so complicated as to distract from the real needs and goals.
Accurate comparisons are especially challenging when these exercises could incorporate up to nine different pricing metrics across various pricing models. Most importantly, you can’t limit your calculus to your current state. Future changes in consumption must be considered. You don’t want surprises down the road, and you can’t be in a position where your integration budget is a gating factor in your plans for development and innovation.
Now multiply these exercises based on however many solutions are under consideration and the scope of the work becomes clear.
I would argue that this is a waste of valuable resources that should be focusing on innovation instead.
The need to empower software engineering and development leaders to actively participate in critical decisions relative to strategic investments is a business imperative.
Let’s face it, without software engineers and developers, enterprise integration would not be possible.
“Integration platforms are development tools, and like any software development process, you should plan for a staged delivery process – untested deployments to production will eventually cause a catastrophic failure of key business processes and systems.”
Integration Platform Pricing Evaluation for Software Engineering Leaders, Gartner
May 2023
Unless your company has very simple integration requirements, for example supporting a single point-to-point use case, your IT environment is complex, requiring a highly skilled workforce that understands the technology and–most importantly–your business.
These are the people best-suited to provide technical guidance and to participate in the decisions that inform both your immediate and longer term integration strategy.
At Digibee, we call this Developer’s Choice, the autonomization of developers. Enabling these talented workers to focus on digital transformation that accelerates innovation and ensures the company consistently achieves its business objectives is our goal.
Estimates show that the majority of integrations use custom coding. This coding time and effort is largely wasted, and it forces developers to do work that lacks scale and governance. Being the developer’s choice means providing a platform for all developers to use – to replace mundane coding and work that must be continually repeated.
Sadly, for many organizations saddled with legacy integration products, these valuable resources spend inordinate amounts of time performing this work. For example, upgrading on-premises integration tools, redundant coding, and other lower value tasks (such as building complex pricing comparisons).
With contemporary born in the cloud technology, integration is democratized. Complicated workflows and time-consuming work are no longer a requirement. All developers are empowered to contribute, freeing up bandwidth and allowing developers to truly flex their muscles and innovate for the sake of the business.
If your software engineering and development leaders are sinking significant time into product and pricing comparisons, then you may want to reconsider the complexity of your IT environment.
A Digibee pricing comparison takes minutes. Our all-in-one pricing model is enabled using three SKUs (yes, you read that right), with no limitations. Support, maintenance, and training are included in the subscription price at no additional charge. We help you build your first integrations, and train your developers quickly, without a professional services charge that can too often be a budget buster.
The Digibee Integration Platform streamlines convoluted workflows, providing a technology model that is accessible to all developers. With a 10-day learning curve (at no cost), even the most junior developers are building integrations within weeks.
The role of developers within your company’s integration strategy is undeniable. Not only to guide purchasing decisions, but to develop and execute upon an integration strategy that delivers what your business needs today and into the future.
Thank you for taking the time to read this blog post. If you have an integration story you’d like to share or you’re in the midst of a project you’d like to discuss, please contact us.
If you’re interested in learning more about Digibee’s born in the cloud iPaaS for a simpler, faster, and modern approach to integration, then contact us for a demonstration or visit our website.
Gartner, Integration Platform Pricing Evaluation for Software Engineering Leaders, Andrew Comes, Keith Guttridge, 17 May 2023
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
Learn how Johnson Brothers successfully tackled their integration challenges using Digibee’s cutting-edge technology.
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The Forrester Technology and Data Strategy event in Austin TX occurred earlier this month. Our team was especially pleased to attend and co-present with Alec Irwin, lead integration developer at Johnson Brothers, a prominent wine, beer, and spirits distributor in the US.
Digibee has partnered with Johnson Brothers on a significant enterprise integration implementation, helping the company transition from its on-premises solution (in place for six years) to Digibee’s born in the cloud iPaaS.
The work is particularly exciting in that we’ve achieved such impressive results. For example, modernizing six years of on-premises integrations to Digibee’s iPaaS in less than six months. Plus, the implementation was 70% faster versus upgrading to the new version of the legacy product.
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