Maturity comes with age and experience. This adage is as true for a business as it is for an individual. Anyone can look back to an instance where they were learning a new skill and wish they could have known what they know now. Hopefully most of us can similarly think of something we DIDN’T do because we learned from someone else’s experience.
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How Banks Can Leverage Enterprise iPaaS to Modernize Legacy Systems
Financial institutions are facing a uniquely challenging technological landscape. As their customers increasingly demand the personalized digital experiences they enjoy in other sectors, banks are left having to bridge the gaps between ease-of-access and security, speed and accuracy, competitive fees and vast, complex data systems.
Their core banking system architecture is too important to risk with a cavalier approach, but more flexibility is needed to stay competitive and adapt to emerging trends. As a large financial institution, how can you facilitate the right change when there is so little room for error?
>> Book a personalized demo with our team of experts and see how Digibee’s iPaaS will bring efficiency to your business.
The Current State of Banking Technology
Aging data centers and legacy systems still underpin the core banking system architecture used in financial sectors. When saddled with legacy back-end technology in banking core systems, which encompasses the essential services such as accounts, online payments, personal loans and mortgages, a bank has a lot of work to do to update their tech stack.
The fix is often not as simple as indiscriminately tearing out everything old and replacing it with the newest thing on the market.
Take, for example, COBOL, a programming language still commonly used by banks today. It was developed in 1959, making it several years older than the average CEO. Is this legacy banking system ready for retirement? Sources disagree whether it represents an evolutionary dead end, or still provides core business value.
Mainframe and COBOL, when properly maintained, are still able to handle the daily transaction processing of an integrated banking system, and even 60+ years later IBM continues to provide updates and support.
Roughly 40% of mid-sized banks don’t yet have an API strategy
The connections between these complex systems must also be considered. Will the flexibility needed to modernize be found through native integration vs API? Roughly 40% of mid-sized banks don’t yet have an API strategy, as only the largest banks can afford the time and resource expenditure of building and maintaining all their own APIs with internal IT teams.
The Modern Banking Customer
The modern banking customer has grown to expect easy access to their money and financial information. Although the reality of these transactions – which involve retrieving and transferring financial information between institutions who could be under differing governing regulations, and require connecting with a foreign bank integration API – is truly anything but, an app’s slick user interfaces make it all feel very simple from that user’s point of view.
This sense of ease of use, and desire for empowerment is only expected to grow as a customer demand. Gartner lists the three evolutions of digital in financial services are:
- easier self-service transactions
- empowered customer journeys
- embedded financial relationships
As the FinTech sector grows, more competitors to traditional banking come online, eager and better-positioned to meet all of these technological opportunities. At the same time, many countries are making changes that impact the financial regulations governing their banks, meaning any advantage a traditional bank might have with years of history under its belt may be lost in the need to quickly pivot to align with a whole new mode of operation.
Open banking policies are a prime example of how shifts in financial regulations have demanded rapid change from the financial institutions of many countries.
“The financial system has been structured [over centuries] to protect bank details and has created internal strengths for that. Open banking changes this premise and establishes that the data is no longer owned by the bank. It is a violent cultural change.”
Carlos Augusto de Oliveira, director and coordinator of the technology forums of the Brazilian Banking Association (ABBC), on Brazil’s shift to open banking in 2020
Bridging the Gap with Enterprise Integration
Wherever you land on retiring the COBOL mainframe, or any other legacy banking system still in use in the financial world, the key takeaway is that the gap between traditional banking and the modern banking customer has to be bridged.
“(Banking) systems generally have technologies that are out of date with the needs and standards of security, performance and scalability that are required for today’s connected world.”
Peter Kreslins Junior, Digibee CTO and cofounder
This still leaves a complex dilemma in front of banks:
- Review their entire legacy system and find an internal way to make these API integrations feasible, or
- Seek alternative platforms that work with focus on modern digital financial services.
“I see this second option as a trend, the market is moving in that direction. With the platforms that connect more easily, banks enable and accelerate this integration without needing a high investment, which is essential, taking into account the tight schedule and limited budgets of some institutions,” points out the director of ABBC.
Enterprise Integration Platform-as-a-Service, especially when supported by the right vendor with financial industry experience, provides an excellent option. A good iPaaS works to support legacy systems, giving the flexibility needed to allow a financial institution to marry the latest-and-greatest with the tried-and-true into one seamless system.
When comparing API vs integration, especially iPaaS, the main factors to consider are cost and time needed to build. To build one new API integration, a developer must have a high level of skill and a deep understanding of the two specific systems being connected, with the bank integration API, making it a time-consuming and costly endeavor.
The shift to a low-code platform with pre-built reusable tools streamlines the API build process, and automation lends new levels of operational efficiency both to the building of the system and to maintaining it.
Digibee Knows Banking Integration
Digibee has real-world experience working with banks that need to modernize banking core systems fast. In a partnership with a global banking institution, the 5th largest commercial bank in Brazil, Digibee successfully delivered a fully automated and secure integration solution in record time.
Whether your financial institution is trying to create an integrated banking system that relies on Microservices, ESB/Cloud, or APIs, Digibee’s local interface can connect and shift data securely to the Digibee platform in real-time.
Learn more about how Digibee can support your financial institution on its modernization journey or, if you prefer, request a demo to see our solution in action.
Enterprise IT Architecture: The Importance of Simplifying Complex Systems
Years of technological evolution and innovation without consideration for simplified approaches have left many businesses dependent on an abundance of complex enterprise IT architecture. Legacy systems, siloed data, and patchwork solutions to pressing problems have reduced agility and hampered companies’ ability to rapidly respond to market changes.
But there is a better way.
It is possible to simplify your complex architecture with the aid of modern tools like IT system integration.
>> Book a personalized demo with our team of experts and see how Digibee’s iPaaS will bring efficiency to your business.
When Purpose and Function Don’t Align
The purpose of IT is to enable revenue generation or product delivery processes, so aligning IT with business goals is critical. But too often, IT departments face criticism for failing to meet organizational expectations around deadlines, functionality, performance, or security due to a backlog of work.
The business often sees only the tip of the iceberg of what system architects and developers have created over time as they responded to evolving requirements and expectations. The IT team has, over years, implemented new systems and technologies to meet changing needs – and the result is an immense technical legacy that requires specialized professionals to maintain.
And that’s when the trouble starts.
The complexity of their enterprise IT architecture and the rapid evolution of technology leave organizations unable to keep up. Declining revenue drives technology budget cuts, and companies are trapped by their own legacy systems, unable to embrace new solutions like cloud, IoT, machine learning, and artificial intelligence needed to compete in a digital-first world.
Simplifying Enterprise IT Architecture
Overgrown IT architecture must be cut back before you can develop a strategy to streamline your systems and embrace new technology. Before you start pruning, consider the following:
- Business doesn’t stop. No matter how complex and outdated your current IT architecture strategy is, you must find a road to transition that allows legacy systems to keep running while more modern, streamlined solutions are developed over top of them.
- You can’t be agile with obsolete technology. Outdated systems that don’t support new development and operational models will hold you back from competing with digital natives. Modern enterprise IT architecture is critical to creating a system that can respond quickly to changes in the market.
Your problems (and your systems) might be complex. But the solutions can and should be simple and straightforward. Before you can simplify the complexities in your IT architecture strategy, you must identify and isolate your challenges.
Integration: Making the Complex Simple
For years, integrating data and systems required a range of technologies, protocols, and parts. Integration was a complex problem, and companies attempting it needed highly specialized experts and a lot of time to commit to the extensive process.
Connecting just two systems called for a myriad of tools, including service buses, API gateways, and tools for execution, monitoring, and troubleshooting. Each gear in the machine depended on coordination between many players:
- Analysts to examine data that would be moved
- Network professionals to create the necessary connections
- Security professionals to guard against breach or loss
- Developers to create codes and oversee execution
In short, it was a long and complicated process that went far beyond taking data from one place and moving it to another. But identifying and isolating difficulties allows you to remove roadblocks.
- Automation can let you design, execute, and operate an integration without disturbing either source or destination systems
- No-code and low-code tools simplify the process of developing integrations
- Cloud can eliminate the complexity associated with data centers and ensure you only consume the necessary computational capacity
By leveraging an enterprise IT architecture that lets you isolate complexities, you can build a platform that is easy and intuitive to use. Technology should be an enabler, not an obstacle. And today more than ever, IT teams have the power to cut back overgrown complex legacy systems to make operations simpler, more agile, and more efficient.
What’s Blocking IT System Integration?
Recent data from the 2022 State of Enterprise Integration Report indicates only 7% of companies have successfully completed the task of pruning back legacy IT systems and implementing an integration solution. While the vast majority of respondents said their organization would benefit from integration, execution remains low. The reasons offered are varied:
Sound familiar? All of these concerns are side effects of a lack of alignment between purpose and function – a side effect of the patchwork solutions many organizations have relied on to address changing demands and technology.
Digibee Makes Integration Easy
At Digibee, we understand the challenges companies face when they’re dependent on legacy infrastructure. Our eiPaaS gives you the flexibility and agility you need to compete in today’s digital-first business world.
Our solution comes with comprehensive support and without lengthy commitments or large upfront investments. Plus, our innovative model can significantly reduce the time it takes to develop and implement integrations, so you can realize the benefits that much faster.
To learn more about how we can help you simplify complex enterprise IT architecture, request a demo today so we can discuss your needs.
3 Benefits of Digital Transformation in the Retail Industry
If there was any lingering doubt about the need for digital transformation in the retail industry, it was removed by the pandemic. Lockdowns and health concerns forced consumers to digitize their consumption habits, and the benefits of digital transformation in retail became painfully clear to brands still reliant on legacy architecture. Companies had to adapt quickly to survive.
The rapid shift to digital commerce set a high bar for many retailers as customers demanded the personalized attention and custom experiences they enjoyed in-store while they shopped online. Businesses that have not yet embraced the retail digital transformation trend are at risk of making themselves irrelevant. Yet many companies are still struggling with how to integrate legacy systems with the new technologies needed to meet current demands.
>> Book a personalized demo with our team of experts and see how Digibee’s iPaaS will bring efficiency to your business.
What’s Holding Retailers Back?
84% of US shoppers say the pandemic affected their purchasing habits. The most common changes? New shopping methods and different brands. Consumers have clearly adapted. Why is digital transformation in retail lagging so far behind?
The digital transformation journey can be daunting. Many retailers have invested heavily in legacy architecture unable to effectively support an omnichannel experience. Without this capability, buyers can’t access products or services through the channel of their choosing – whether website, app, chatbot, or physical store – and core data remains siloed and inaccessible.
What’s Standing in the Way of Integration?
- Budget
- Complexity and time
- Lack of skills
- Security
- Legacy Systems
But dependence on legacy, monolithic architecture doesn’t have to mean that embracing an omnichannel strategy is beyond your reach.
3 Benefits of Digital Transformation in the Retail Industry
Retailers who integrate legacy systems can realize a host of benefits that offer a competitive edge over those who haven’t embraced digital transformation.
1. Connected Customer Data
“The ability to view data, derive insights from it, and have one source of truth could be your advantage over competitors who are held back by silos and poor quality data.”
Michael Paladino, CEO of RevUnit
An effective omnichannel strategy requires that your existing systems be connected and communicating:
- Order management
- Enterprise resource planning
- Point of sale
- Customer relationship management
- Ecommerce platforms
In most legacy architecture setups, the only way to view data from all of these systems at once is to download it from each source separately and combine it manually – an inefficient process that cannot support selling across multiple channels.
The right integration solution will allow data to flow efficiently between core and support systems, providing you with cross-platform insights into consumer behaviors and interests, so you can deliver personalized experiences however shoppers choose to interact with you.
2. Oversight of Orders and Inventory
Another benefit of digital transformation in retail is the ability to connect and equalize your order module across multiple channels for an integrated view of all orders and requests in your OMS, regardless of where each purchase originated.
Integrating legacy systems can also improve your ability to manage inventory – another sensitive issue for retailers. To fully support an omnichannel strategy, your inventory must be 100% integrated, or you could find yourself facing a host of problems that can affect customer loyalty and experience:
- Missing products
- Sell-outs
- Early billing
- Delivery errors
The global view provided by retail industry digital transformation also lets you leverage physical stores for use as distribution centers. Many retail giants have built centralized and exclusive stock warehouses for virtual operations, but this is not a solution that translates to a smaller-scale retail operation.
3. Improved Efficiency and Agility
Integration of legacy systems facilitates the automation of your organization’s entire operational flow – from order generation in various channels to monitoring delivery at your customers’ homes. Automation significantly reduces operational errors and omissions, increasing efficiency and improving the customer experience.
By connecting stock in your brick-and-mortar locations to your centralized system, you gain the capacity to run a highly automated, low-cost ecommerce operation leveraging your existing interfaces and systems.
Example:
Set your payment transactions to complete automatically ONLY when ordered products have been properly separated for the customer.
This ensures shoppers are only charged for what you actually deliver and eliminates additional processes like having to issue refunds for out-of-stock inventory.
When your legacy architecture supports (not obstructs) your retail digital transformation strategy, an omnichannel approach is within your reach and competition with digital natives is possible.
Enterprise iPaaS for Digital Transformation in Retail
The “new normal” is here. And the benefits of digital transformation in retail will only become more compelling – but how do you achieve them? The retail industry never stops, and brands can’t afford to put business on hold while overhauling their systems for digital transformation. Enter iPaaS – or integration platform-as-a-service for enterprises.
Discover how we helped Payless integrate their secure ecommerce platform with over 200 stores in 15 countries in just 30 days!
Enterprise iPaaS lets your brand integrate legacy systems without the need to tear down and replace old, monolithic architecture. Connections can be built on top of existing solutions to connect aging (but critical) solutions to the new technologies you need to support an omnichannel offering.
We get it
Digibee understands the pressures faced by retailers and CPG companies. Our innovative enterprise iPaaS lets you realize the benefits of digital transformation without lengthy disruptions or significant upfront investments.
Request a demo to learn what we can do for you.
Global Retailer Case Study
Digibee integrates POS System in Brazil used in all of its stores with a global ERP in China in just 4 weeks for worldwide retail company.
Forrester Total Economic Impact Report for Digibee: How We Measure Up
Digibee has spent the past few years helping organizations connect the old with the new, allowing them to tap into important business innovations such as cloud migration, automation, and optimized customer experiences.
Legacy System Modernization: How and Why to Avoid Technological Lock-In
The technological solutions of the past were built with the idea that they should last a lifetime. Investments in a new system or technological architecture were expected to offer returns for years to come.
But the world changes – and quickly. The idea of having a near-permanent and definitive technology is a pipe dream. Companies that bought into that idea are now dependent on monolithic, complex and coupled architectures where simply changing one piece can bring the whole system crashing down. Legacy system modernization is quickly becoming a top priority for many organizations.
Moving data and information through and between these siloed systems is challenging and time-consuming. Businesses that rely on these aging solutions are suddenly at a sharp disadvantage compared to competitors with more flexible infrastructure. They are victims of technological lock-in.
>> Book a personalized demo with our team of experts and see how Digibee’s iPaaS will bring efficiency to your business.
What is Technological Lock-In?
There are several driving factors behind technological lock-in.
- The inability to follow and assimilate technological developments
- Dependence on solutions that can’t communicate with other platforms
- A fear of new solutions and the forms of imprisonment they may bring
The unwillingness – or inability – to embrace new technologies can directly and negatively impact an organization’s ability to compete in a changing marketplace. Victims of technological lock-in find themselves forced to choose between legacy system modernization approaches and rapidly spiraling technological debt as they struggle to keep pace with more agile competitors.
But is technological or vendor lock-in avoidable?
Some companies looking to avoid the perils of technological lock-in are resisting the idea of committing to any one cloud provider. But to build out a fully cloud-agnostic solution, they end up dependent on a series of solutions that ultimately cause internal lock-in and increase costs astronomically.
A future move to a different solution would mean rewriting features dependent on current cloud selections – but not choosing a solution could mean overhauling those capabilities immediately. Companies are forced to choose between immediate vendor lock-in or the potential of additional work, delays and security risks.
Freedom from the Lock-In Mindset
The rise of more flexible architectures and microservices highlights a change in the mindset of companies – and this paradigm shift can free enterprises from the limitations of technological lock-in.
The secret is not to choose between business-critical (but outdated) systems and shiny new solutions, but to embrace legacy system modernization using flexible architecture solutions that don’t require the destruction of older solutions. The ability to deploy new applications alongside legacy systems means lock-in is no longer an issue, and companies can extend and leverage investments already made in legacy systems. The only choice decision-makers are faced with is which tool provides the best value.
For this approach to succeed, your technological architecture must have the ability to guarantee that core data, vital to your daily operations, is transported without barrier or damage to its integrity between different environments. And in this scenario, choosing a specialized platform built specifically for this purpose will be cheaper and faster than committing resources to develop internal solutions.
Companies must leave behind the fear of falling into technological lock-in and prioritize the use of the best available solutions that will meet their needs at that moment. Building a platform that cannot communicate with other services hurts businesses’ ability to compete and leads to loss of market share.
iPaaS to Modernize Legacy Systems
The process of integrating business-critical legacy systems with new technological solutions is not without challenges and risk. Choosing and implementing an integration solution can:
- Involve a significant upfront investment
- Strain already overworked IT teams
- Disrupt regular business operations
- Increase the risk of data loss
- Add months or years to digital transformation plans
Many integration solutions require huge investments in time and resources to succeed – both during implementation and ongoing use and maintenance. And 98% of enterprises report needing to rebuild key integrations in the past year.
An enterprise integration platform-as-a-service (or iPaaS), however, can help minimize risk, costs, and implementation time. Because connections can be built on top of old architecture without replacing legacy connections until testing is complete, an iPaaS can dramatically shorten integration project timelines and reduce the risk associated with legacy system modernization.
Discover the Digibee Difference
Forrester Research reports that Digibee’s iPaaS helps enterprises increase developer efficiency, limit costs and accelerate time to market, offering a 232% return on investment and a payback period of under six months. Let us make your legacy systems migration efforts easy, pain-free, and faster than other integration solutions.
To learn more about what Digibee can do for you, download the Forrester Total Economic Impact Report or, if you prefer, request a demo of our solution.
Digibee Employee Highlight Series: Mariana Stankovic, People Analyst
Dog-mom, party-planner, travel-enthusiast, and experimental chef all in one friendly package! Meet our People Analyst, Mariana Stankovic, and read about her corner of the Digibee world.
SAP S/4HANA Transition: What’s the Rush?
It’s been two years since SAP announced it would sunset support for its on-premise ERP. There are five years until the current deadline. In business terms, five years seems like a comfortable window for change – in the technology world, five years is practically an eternity. With what seems like all the time in the world to migrate, is starting your SAP S/4HANA transition really that urgent?
The short answer: Yes.
The longer answer: Seriously, what are you waiting for? There are several reasons not to put off an SAP S/4HANA migration, no matter how daunting it may seem.
>> Book a personalized demo with our team of experts and see how Digibee’s iPaaS will bring efficiency to your business.
Other Systems Depend on It
Any unanticipated shift to a new technological system is a challenge. But your ERP isn’t just any old system. It’s a core system with many dependencies. You’ll need to examine the relationship between SAP and each solution or tool it interacts with before you can make the move.
Data migration is a crucial factor to consider when evaluating your SAP S/4HANA integration options. Overlooking a dependency before your migration begins can result in data loss and significant disruptions to your operations. Starting your S/4HANA transition now ensures you have as much time as possible to examine and address dependencies in your system.
Sometimes Things Go Wrong
Your SAP modernization efforts may well be your organization’s first real foray into the world of cloud, and preparing for the worst (while hoping for the best) is the smart move.
Even if your company has already embraced cloud-based solutions for other aspects of your business, it’s never wise to assume that everything will go exactly as planned. Something as simple as a lack of stakeholder alignment on the goals and priorities for your SAP S/4HANA transition can derail the entire process. The responsible move is to begin planning for the shift while the old system is still there as a reliable backup.
S/4HANA Migration has Benefits
It’s easy to think that your SAP S/4HANA transition is a massive evil task you’re being forced to undertake against your will. But migration can serve as a catalyst for your digital transformation journey and transform your ERP into a more strategic partner for other lines of business.
It can:
- Unlock potential for cost savings
- Reduce technical debt
- Improve efficiency
- Empower your team to innovate
Do you really want to delay that?
Simplify Your SAP S/4HANA Transition
Recognizing the benefits of moving forward now with your SAP S/4HANA migration doesn’t mean that all the challenges associated with doing so will simply vanish into thin air. Still, there are ways to simplify the process.
1. Learn from those who’ve already made the move
- You’re developing a strategy for SAP modernization; you’re not reinventing the wheel. S/4HANA didn’t just appear when SAP announced its 2027 ECC sunset date. Plenty of companies – some with more complicated dependencies or niche legacy systems than you – have already made the transition. Learn from their experiences, mistakes, and successes as you develop your SAP S/4HANA roadmap.
2. Take time to inventory and understand your environment
- One of the major arguments for mapping your journey to SAP S/4HANA now is that you’ll have more time to get things right. Every single system touching your on-premises ERP may also need modernization. Invest time in documenting systems and their dependencies, and carefully determine:
- What should be modernized as part of your migration
- What you can “lift and shift” for modernization in the future
- What can be eliminated or streamlined for greater efficiency
3. Find or build an SAP S/4HANA roadmap
- Digital transformation isn’t a destination – it’s a journey. And there are plenty of guides available to help make the transition more manageable and less disruptive if you’re ready to ask for help.
- Find an existing framework or process with a proven record of success that will serve as a roadmap for your SAP S/4HANA transition, or partner with a vendor that has already completed the journey before and knows what to watch out for.
Choose Digibee for SAP Modernization
Digibee’s low-code iPaaS can help simplify and accelerate your S/4HANA transition. We empower you to implement integrations 40% faster to decrease costs, reduce disruptions, reduce technical debt, and completely eliminate downtime. We’ve helped many organizations develop an SAP ECC to S/4HANA roadmap that works for them, and we’re proud to be a featured vendor in the SAP Store.
Download your copy of Digibee’s 6-step process to de-risk and speed up your SAP S/4HANA Migration to learn how to make your migration easy and risk-free.
For more information, visit our SAP resource page.
Financial Services: What are the Top Cloud Migration Challenges You Must Overcome?
Shifting from on-premises to a cloud environment delivers significant efficiencies for your financial services organization, allowing you to tap into important innovations and improvements such as automation, process support, stronger security, and the elimination of aging datacenters.
Yet, according to a recent McKinsey survey, cloud adoption in the financial services sector remains at a very early stage, with only 13% of organizations having half or more of their IT footprint in the cloud.
Fortunately, the industry isn’t letting the grass grow under its feet, with 54% of respondents expecting to shift at least half their workloads to the public cloud over the next five years.
But getting to the cloud isn’t always easy. This article will help you mitigate–and even avoid–many of the challenges your financial services organization may encounter, ensuring a smooth transition with minimal disruptions to the business.
>> Book a personalized demo with our team of experts and see how Digibee’s iPaaS will bring efficiency to your business.
1. Performance
Cloud environment performance is key to maintaining continuity and minimizing disruptions such as IT downtime that impact the business. Cloud performance issues are often due to availability, network latency, or application processing delays.
How to do it right
Before your migration process begins, it’s essential to:
- Identify which applications are best suited to cloud migration
- Understand application dependencies
- Make a plan for what you will migrate and when
- Become familiar with cloud integration platforms as they will allow for ideal performance
Make migration decisions based on data flows or business domains – not on which systems provide or receive data. Select technology that delivers the flexibility to migrate what needs migrating and keep other systems in place.
Decoupling data streams in completely isolated containers allows for both vertical and horizontal tuning. This model lets you optimize traffic between points, removing the performance constraints typically associated with cloud migration and putting the focus of analysis on endpoint capacity.
2. Cost Management
Cloud costs are climbing rapidly for many financial services organizations, with banks estimated to waste as much as 35% of cloud spending on inefficient activities. It’s vital to carefully manage costs, factoring in the duration and complexity of your transition to ensure a solid return on your investment.
How to do it right
There are a few ways to control the price of a shift to the cloud:
- Establish a cost management checklist to follow whenever you deploy new services
- Base all organizational cloud usage on your company’s financial policies
- Budget specific amounts for different projects, departments, or categories and review regularly to ensure you’re on track
- Utilize cost reporting tools from vendors or third parties to ensure consistency
A platform-as-a-service model eliminates the need for upfront infrastructure investments and allows costs to be adjusted to match project scope without compromising the agility or scalability of your solution.
And while traditional cloud vendor tools focus solely on the transition, a cloud-based enterprise integration platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) can simplify your cloud migration process while also laying the groundwork for architecture modernization to support future efficiencies.
3. Governance
Financial services organizations face much greater scrutiny and regulatory oversight than many other sectors. The industry requires protocols for controls, processes, and documentation that meet strict guidelines.
Provisioning, infrastructure delivery, and operations are major challenges associated with cloud computing and the complexity involved in properly implementing, using, controlling, and maintaining IT assets.
Traditional governance models must be adapted to new environments to enhance security, manage risk, and avoid problems such as:
- Poor integration between cloud systems
- Data or effort duplication
- System and business goals unaligned
- Inefficient use or resources
How to do it right
- Ensure reuse and access standardization to systems, data, and business flows
- Keep cloud usage standards consistent with organizational and financial services regulations / compliance requirements
- Align cloud strategy with overall business and IT strategies to ensure cloud systems provide quantifiable support for business objectives
- Maintain clear agreements between all stakeholders so resources are used and shared appropriately
- Implement changes in a consistent, standardized manner
- Rely on monitoring and automation for dynamic event response
4. Operations Management
The problem of shadow IT and the unnecessary use of resources reduces operational efficiency and security while driving up costs. Robust cloud operations management helps overcome some cloud migration challenges. Service level agreements define expected performance levels, but continual monitoring is necessary to ensure SLAs are upheld as infrastructure components change.
Processes and checks must be implemented in alignment with industry and corporate standards before code is deployed to production, and security requirements and access controls must be in place.
How to do it right
- Active monitoring with execution control, error handling, and reprocessing rules
- Easy-to-use dashboard
- Logging and alert capabilities
- API management support for the creation, security, management, and sharing of APIs
- Ability to interact with existing ITSM tools to send logs, events, and metrics to central monitoring, email addresses, or messaging applications
5. Observability
Observability enables administrators to gather internal and external data on networked resources to monitor and understand their behavior, investigate anomalies, and improve performance and uptime.
But this can be challenging in a cloud environment, especially given the massive volume of data and components in cloud architecture. In fact, 75% of CISOs within financial services organizations say vulnerability management has become more difficult as the need to accelerate digital transformation has increased.
How to do it right
Make sure the observability tools you select support:
- Integration with existing tools and support for necessary frameworks and languages
- User-friendly interfaces to ensure they are used correctly and regularly
- Real-time insights through dashboards, reports, and queries so teams can quickly understand issues and their impacts
- Support for modern event handling and context techniques
- Visual presentation for rapid comprehension and action
6. Security
According to VMWare, in the first half of 2020, we saw an increase of 238% in cyberattacks targeting financial institutions. This frightening statistic emphasizes the need to ensure controls and practices that are in place for on-premises systems are adequate–or are replaced–to meet the requirements of cloud-based systems. Failure to support this transition could introduce new risks to your operation:
- Increased attack surface (public cloud has become a large, attractive target for cybercriminals)
- Insecure interfaces and APIs
- Lack of visibility and tracking, which can lead to reduced protections
- Workload flexibility – traditional tools can’t handle dynamic environments
- DevOps, DevSecOps, and automation, as well as appropriate controls must be identified early in the development cycle to avoid security gaps or delays
- Granular permissions and keys management, which can provide the wrong users dangerously high access levels
- Complex environments made up of public cloud, private cloud, on-premises deployments, and edge protection
How to do it right
Mission-critical resources must be deployed in logically isolated areas, and dedicated WAN links and enterprise-defined static routing configurations used to customize access to devices, networks, gateways, and public IP addresses.
Secure all distributed cloud applications and automatically update WAF rules when there is a measurable change in traffic. Be sure to apply and enforce all financial services security policies and processes consistently.
Employ encryption at every level of data transport, and deploy software that detects, identifies, and remediates threats in real-time.
Avoid Cloud Migration Challenges with Digibee
Digibee’s unique cloud native enterprise iPaaS model helps minimize the risks of these common cloud migration challenges that disrupt migration and architecture modernization processes, ensuring that your digital transformation is smooth and seamless. Our solution isn’t just about moving your data and processes to the cloud. Digibee helps future-proof your financial services operation so you’re ready for anything – including competing in a digital-first world.
Want to learn more about how your financial services organization can overcome cloud migration challenges with Digibee’s iPaaS solution? Request a demo with our team now for more information.
Digibee Employee Highlight Series: Paula Arencibia, Customer Success Manager
Dog-lover, pickleball enthusiast, polyglot (fun word; worth a Google), nature-explorer, and ninja-warrior are just some of the ways to describe our Customer Success Manager, Paula Arencibia! I loved hearing about how this fascinating, multi-faceted individual spends her days at Digibee.
Accelerated Integration – How Your Enterprise Organization Can Efficiently Integrate Systems
The idea of system and data integration has reached an inflection point. Most companies have acknowledged the critical role embracing a modern integrated architecture plays in their plans for digital transformation. But relatively few have successfully acted on that understanding.
Data in the State of Enterprise Integration Report suggests that 71% of enterprises are actively planning to adopt, supplement, or replace their integration technology. The Gartner Integration Maturity Model notes that many IT departments are still only in the very early stages of developing integration competency – if they’ve started at all.
Adopting the right iPaaS early could give enterprises a technological edge over their competitors. So how do organizations accelerate integration to align their progress with its importance?
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Why the Need for Accelerated Integration?
The Gartner maturity assessment suggests that approximately 30% of organizations are only getting started with integration, with a significant percentage of those at a point where they have not recognized the value of a comprehensive integration strategy.
Why bother with integration? Does it really matter? The short answer: Yes, it really does.
Poor integrations – or a lack of integration altogether – has a range of measurable, negative impacts on business. We gathered data from more than 1,000 CIOs and system architects, and the most commonly cited effects of a lack of integration included:
- Inability to adopt new practices and technologies that support growth (48%)
- Inefficiencies that directly affect business success (48%)
- Lack of ability to respond to market changes in a timely manner (40%)
- Wasted resources as IT departments focus on maintenance and low-value tasks (37%)
All these responses support the understanding that data integration issues are business issues that will affect growth, profitability, and long-term success.
The Phases of Integration Maturity
The Gartner Integration Maturity Model breaks down companies’ progress toward implementing comprehensive integration strategies into five stages – and puts those five stages into three overarching phases.
Getting Started
The “getting started” phase in Gartner’s maturity assessment includes two of its five stages:
Ad Hoc
- No formal integration strategy
- Little or no acknowledgment of integration as an interdependent issue or discipline
- Integration tools are not used or only infrequently used for specific projects
- Any integration solution relies heavily on custom coding or scripting
Enlightened
- Integration is recognized as an issue
- No formal responsibility for integration
- IT resources are used for integration solution procurement and support
State of Enterprise Integration Report: 71% of enterprises are embracing integration.
Standardization
Gartner estimates around 60% of businesses are in the phase, which includes two more stages:
Centralized
- Integration is a recognized competency, overseen by a formally defined integration competency center
- The ICC employs various specialists, selects platforms and tools, and defines best practices
- The minimum level of Gartner’s integration maturity model needed to effectively meet the growing need for integration
State of Enterprise Integration Report: 74% of IT professionals in manufacturing report needing integration to address as much as 60% of their IT backlog.
Collaborative
- Systems in place to support company-wide integration needs
- ICC evolves into an integration strategy empowerment team
- ISET selects and delivers integration tools in a centrally governed service
Business Utility
At this final stage, integration is embedded in the organization’s digital culture, and there is an understanding that integration must be a pervasive competency that includes both internal and external partners. The ISET facilitates self-service integration – supporting business users who may occasionally need to perform integration tasks in the completion of their duties.
State of Enterprise Integration Report: 79% of enterprise IT professionals say they have impactful and significantly more down time than expected.
How to Achieve an Efficient Integration
The findings in Gartner’s maturity assessment and the data in the State of Enterprise Integration report are aligned on the importance of an organization-wide integration strategy – and the fact that many businesses are far from implementation. So how can organizations accelerate integration to reach the levels needed to respond to rising demand?
- Be realistic about what your organization needs and can implement
- Stop thinking of integration as a tool to minimize costs and start treating it as a force multiplier that increases value
- Educate yourself and your team about integration patterns and technology
- Identify use cases for integration in your organization and develop strategy with those in mind
- Determine key functionalities you will use to evaluate integration solutions
- Align stakeholders on the integration requirements that will come with business transformation
- Plan and develop a hybrid integration platform and self-service integration model
- Apply your new capabilities strategically to business opportunities
- Promote self-service integration across your organization and experiment with business user-led initiatives to test and improve your strategy
Remember, a lack of effective integration strategy can cost your business in a variety of tangible ways. Although the road to implementing a strategy can seem challenging, accelerated integration can be achieved if you approach it carefully and methodically.
Digibee Can Help Accelerate Enterprise Integrations
Digibee’s unique enterprise iPaaS can help your organization accelerate digital transformations and increase your organization’s IT maturity – and we can make it happen faster than any other integration solution.
To learn more about accelerating integration and how to determine what stage your business is at, request a demo today.