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I sat down with Head of Product Management and rockstar bassist (my words, not his) Rodrigo Lara, for an engaging discussion about the present and future of Digibee from the perspective of one of its earliest employees.
Digibee’s methodology utilizes best practices to reduce complexity, lower costs, and mitigate risks, to accelerate completion timelines with no downtime.
Digibee’s six-step methodology for SAP Migration can be deployed across virtually any combination of technologies that require integration.
A critical factor in enterprise success today is the ability to respond quickly to change. You might be adapting to the next pandemic, a new technology, or a shift in your industry, but whatever the challenge, you must be able to pivot quickly.
That means having all your data and systems available where and when you need them. And for many of today’s organizations, it means figuring out how to integrate legacy systems and siloed data.
With only 6% of enterprise IT professionals confirming their organization has successfully implemented an integration strategy, it’s clear that many businesses are still in the planning stage. [1]
Like any significant change to your operations, choosing the right integration tools can be daunting. Let’s look at the questions you should ask yourself as you look for new system integration tools.
>> Book a personalized demo with our team of experts and see how Digibee’s iPaaS will bring efficiency to your business.
Many enterprises have historically relied on a centralized model – managed by a single team – to connect all the various endpoints across the organization. But this workflow can cause delays and bottlenecks for modern systems contingent on streamlined connections between distributed components.
Legacy models also make it more challenging to replace default system applications with purpose-built point solutions that benefit the business and its customers.
Today’s digital-first world doesn’t afford most companies the luxury of downtime or delays to adopt new integration tools, no matter how beneficial they may be in the long term. But not integrating isn’t an option either, as relying on disparate systems and manual data transfers will leave organizations far behind their digital-native competitors.
There are several factors to consider when you begin searching for the right integration tools for your organization:
Ask yourself the following questions and be sure you know the answers before committing to any systems or data integration tools.
Start at the beginning. Regardless of your resources and visions for the future, there are probably some basic constraints you have to work within. Set the parameters for your integration tools search now, and look for iPaaS tools or solutions that fit them.
With basic requirements considered, you should examine what the integration tools you select will mean to your team. A solution that looks perfect on paper but conflicts with the primary users probably won’t achieve the goals you’re aiming for.
Once you’ve established the fundamental requirements your integration tools must meet and how the solution will affect your team, you can move on to looking at the effects the solution you choose will have on your business – both day-to-day operations and long-term goals.
A major shift in how your organization interfaces with different systems and data can be disruptive. Consider the impact tools for data or systems integration may have on your processes.
Any investment your company makes should help further your business goals, and iPaaS tools for integration are no different. How will the solution you choose impact your success and growth, now and in the future?
Finally, consider any guidance or input from trusted experts or consultants on the integration tools you’re assessing. They eat, sleep, and breathe integration and may be able to highlight benefits or drawbacks you haven’t thought of.
Digibee’s iPaaS solution offers the flexibility and agility your business needs to maintain a competitive edge in a rapidly changing digital-first world. Our integration solution comes without lengthy commitments or large upfront investments, can significantly shorten the time it takes your organization to develop and implement integrations, and provides comprehensive expert support to help maximize the benefits of integrating.
Want to learn more about Digibee’s innovative approach to integration? Request a demo now or contact our team for more information.
Founder and president of digital transformation analyst firm Intellyx, Jason Bloomberg examines three myths of modern integration in this resource from September 2021.
The reality of business today is that digital-first organizations have a significant advantage over their legacy infrastructure-dependent peers. The evolution of technology, the rise of globalization, and changes in how buyers expect to interact with sellers have bogged down businesses dependent on siloed data and systems.
But technology has a solution for this challenge. Enterprise integration allows companies with legacy, niche, or customized systems to connect data and processes with modern platforms to embrace digital transformation and remain competitive. And yet, the number of organizations who’ve fully implemented an integration strategy remains low.
6%
responded that they have a particular integration technology under consideration
30%
say time-to-market is one of their biggest objectives for digital transformations and cloud migrations
28%
say reducing overall operational costs is one of their biggest objectives for digital transformations and cloud migrations
*This blog post, originally published in August 2022, was updated above to reflect data from the 2023 State of Enterprise Integration Report published in April, 2023.
>> Book a personalized demo with our team of experts and see how Digibee’s iPaaS will bring efficiency to your business.
If enterprise integration is such a boon to businesses, why are so few adopting an enterprise integration strategy? How can we explain the glaring disparity between those who view integration positively and those who are implementing it – especially amid a growing push for digital transformation?
Tech professionals from developers to the C-suite point to a wide range of factors holding back the implementation of their enterprise integration strategies.
Budget is the most commonly cited roadblock to enterprise integration, with 36% of tech professionals saying cost concerns negatively impact enterprise integration plans. It’s not uncommon for integration projects to go over budget, and decision-makers are often forced to choose between competing priorities – many of which are more appealing to stakeholders.
Changing how your company’s data or systems are accessed – or handing control of business critical information to an external party – can be daunting. Many enterprise integration platforms and services don’t provide enough transparency into how sensitive data is transported or protected to put IT professionals’ minds at ease. Nearly one-third (31%) say concerns about the security of their systems or data hinder the implementation of an enterprise integration strategy.
Attempting to implement an enterprise integration strategy without a team that has the required skills and expertise or know how to integrate software can result in a project that blows past deadlines or hampers other projects, negatively affecting budget. Engaging third-party professionals or consultants can help but comes with increased cost and/or security concerns.
42%
of IT professionals said their integrations had ineffective practices and other inefficiencies that impact the success of the business
98%
of IT professionals said they have rebuilt integrations for existing key business applications in the past 12 months
*This blog post, originally published in August 2022, was updated above to reflect data from the 2023 State of Enterprise Integration Report published in April, 2023.
The last few years – particularly as businesses rushed to adapt to new models during the pandemic – have left many organizations dependent on patchwork fixes or custom built internal solutions that don’t lend themselves to a digital transformation. And when business critical data is trapped in siloed systems, many companies assume that cloud migration or integration are off the table. In fact, almost one-third of IT professionals say concerns that their legacy or custom systems can’t be integrated have kept them from moving forward with enterprise integration.
42%
of IT professionals say their top objective in the next year is to upgrade from legacy infrastructure
*This blog post, originally published in August 2022, was updated above to reflect data from the 2023 State of Enterprise Integration Report published in April, 2023.
Is there a way to remove these roadblocks and close the gap between companies that acknowledge the importance of enterprise integration and those that have embraced an enterprise integration strategy?
Choosing an integration platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) solution can help address many concerns that keep companies from moving forward with integration. The “as-a-service” model of iPaaS solutions can help mitigate budget concerns by reducing upfront investments or costly long-term commitments and allows users to fully experience the benefits of integrated software.
The right enterprise iPaaS provider will protect data in transit and at rest with solutions that facilitate comprehensive testing of all systems and integrations before going live. And an intuitive, visual solution can alleviate the need for your organization to dedicate all your top experts to the integration process, simplifying the development of integrations for legacy and custom-built applications.
The 2023 State of Enterprise Integration Report by Digibee offers unique, data-based insights into the latest trends in enterprise integration as well as a look at current best practices and changes to expect in the future.
Digibee empowers businesses to build flexible, scalable integration architecture that helps them compete and excel in today’s rapidly changing digital-first environment. Our cloud-native, low-code integration platform allows organizations to connect applications, processes, and people, for a faster time to market without hefty upfront commitments.
For more insights on current trends in enterprise integration, download your free copy of the report, and take your time to contact our experts directly with your questions.
The IT skills shortage is reaching crisis levels as businesses embrace digital-first and omnichannel strategies to compete with digital natives. Many companies cite a shortage of skilled staff as their chief roadblock to digitization. But it doesn’t have to be.
Software developer is among the four most in-demand professions in the US in 2022, a position that is unlikely to change as companies increase cloud spending and embrace digital transformation strategies. And as demand for public cloud services skyrockets, tech giants like Amazon and Microsoft are dramatically expanding their workforces. This leaves other companies struggling to staff key IT positions and, in some cases, putting digitization efforts on hold.
Did You Know? More than 70% of IT leaders around the globe say the IT skills shortage is an urgent concern.
Cloud goals and strategies aren’t even safe at businesses with fully staffed IT departments. Your IT team faces a never-ending barrage of requests from team members with competing priorities, while also working to stay current on new technological innovations and complete routine maintenance tasks. It can be a thankless job.
As competition to attract and retain in-demand experts heats up, you shouldn’t assume that your skilled team won’t be lured away. But how can you ensure your company always has the expertise needed to support innovation and maintain your competitive edge, today and in the future?
>> Book a personalized demo with our team of experts and see how Digibee’s iPaaS will bring efficiency to your business.
The most obvious way to ensure your company isn’t hampered by the IT skills shortage is to keep hiring IT staff. The success of this strategy will depend heavily on your budget to do so, since you’ll be competing with nearly all of the corporate world to attract and retain employees with the skills and experience you need.
This tactic, despite its popularity, is not without its downsides:
Pro Tip: If you do opt for this strategy, put in the effort to make yourself an employer of choice. Take the time to understand your existing teams’ needs and support them with the tools they need to succeed. Build careers instead of simply filling vacancies.
Competing with corporate giants isn’t easy, so you might feel like your company will be better served getting out of the bidding war and instead focusing your efforts on training less experienced employees to protect against the IT skills shortage.
While this strategy avoids shelling out large amounts to cover the salaries of one or two expert players, it also comes with caveats.
Pro Tip: This tactic works best if you tap into existing potential on your team. Try to be a bit more flexible about employment and educational experience. Encourage cross-training and offer opportunities to employees that show promise.
Eliminating your dependence on experts for daily operations may seem like an unlikely way to address the global IT skills shortage, but it can be the most effective. Investing in technological solutions that reduce reliance on specific team members can eliminate many of the challenges associated with hiring or training staff and offer some unique benefits.
Pro Tip: A cloud-based “as-a-service” solution allows you to invest in technology that reduces your exposure to the IT skills shortage without a huge upfront investment or long-term commitment.
The benefits of integration are extensive and innovative. The modern integration architecture of an enterprise-integration-as-a-service solution helps your organization expedite digital transformation and cloud migration projects with a more responsive, agile environment. Data from different systems is integrated into a single, unified view of the business, further accelerating the pace of innovation.
The benefits of pivoting to an iPaas for enterprise instead of focusing on hiring and retention include:
Digibee’s iPaaS solution helps bridge the gap between existing integrating systems and new technologies, connecting data and platforms regardless of the amount of integration experts on staff. With Digibee, you can optimize productivity across your entire IT team, reducing your dependence on one or two experts and guarding against the effects of a global IT skills shortage.
To learn more about our accelerating integration and how to determine what stage your business is at, request a demo with our team today.
The transition from on-premises to cloud environments can provide your business with an array of technological advantages, not the least of which is enterprise architecture modernization. But cloud migration challenges are real – and in some cases, quite daunting – and must be considered as you plan your transition.
The best offense is a good defense. If you understand the cloud migration challenges you can expect to face, you can take steps to prepare for them, minimizing disruption and ensuring a smooth transition. In this post, we’ll examine some of the most common challenges associated with cloud migration and provide some guidelines for minimizing their impact.
>> Book a personalized demo with our team of experts and see how Digibee’s iPaaS will bring efficiency to your business.
Cloud environment performance is key to maintaining continuity and minimizing disruptions that can have significant adverse effects. Cloud performance issues are typically related to availability, network latency, or application processing delays.
How to Do it Right
Before your migration process begins, it’s essential to:
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.
Many organizations are facing rapidly climbing cloud costs and cloud waste. It’s vital to carefully manage costs and factor in the duration and complexity of your transition to minimize cloud migration challenges and 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:
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 integration system including an enterprise integration platform-as-a-service can simplify your cloud migration process while also laying the groundwork for architecture modernization.
Control over provisioning, infrastructure delivery, and operations is a major challenge associated with cloud computing because of 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 like:
How to Do it Right
The problem of shadow IT and unnecessary use of resources can reduce operational efficiency and security while driving up costs. Robust cloud operations management is needed to help 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 before code is deployed to production, and security requirements and access controls put in place.
How to Do it Right
Choose a cloud migration partner or solution that can provide the tools you need to manage operations, including:
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, given the massive volume of data and components in cloud architecture.
How to Do it Right
Make sure the observability tools you select provide the following:
As with governance, the controls and practices developed to secure on-premises environments can’t always meet the requirements of cloud-based systems – and relying on legacy security systems can introduce new risks to your operations due to:
How to Do it Right
Mission-critical resources should 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 security policies and processes consistently.
Employ encryption at every level of data transport, and deploy software that can detect, identify, and remediate threats in real-time.
Digibee’s unique cloud native iPaaS for enterprise model helps minimize the risk that these common cloud migration challenges will 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. We help future-proof your operations so you’re ready for anything – including competing in a digital-first world.
Learn more about how you can overcome cloud migration challenges with Digibee’s iPaaS solution – Request a demo with our team.
Enterprises today are facing new levels of competition and unprecedented expectations from consumers. The key to surviving – and thriving – is to increase efficiency and differentiate to give themselves a competitive edge. Many businesses are turning to technology to help them address a range of marketplace changes:
We’re all a part of the digital revolution. We download podcasts and stream music on Spotify, hail rides with Uber, and get purchases delivered directly to our doorsteps with Amazon.
These digital leaders have not only redefined the way consumers relate to businesses, but they have also defined new markets — toppling traditional ones in the process. They’ve identified consumers’ desire to solve problems on their own, immediately, using digital channels like chatbots and connected devices — market dynamics that have left traditional retailers struggling to survive and keep pace with digital winners.
A McKinsey and Co. survey indicates that responses to the pandemic accelerated the adoption of digital technologies by several years — and that many of these changes are likely here to stay.
And where traditional organizations are heavily invested in siloed information systems on legacy architecture that prevent them from easily developing disruptive solutions to compete in the digital world, digital companies are born using modern technology platforms and carry little to no technical debt.
>> Book a personalized demo with our team of experts and see how Digibee’s iPaaS will bring efficiency to your business.
So how can traditional corporations compete with digital giants and venture capital-backed startups that have the advantage of lower costs and disruptive models?
The most effective approach to the digital transformation required to remain competitive is software systems integration. Replacing legacy systems can involve downtime risks that many companies are unprepared to take, but updating them with new architecture creates an environment where the delivery of digital services is simple and cost effective.
The integration process can be a marathon that requires time, money, and often, specialized resources. Whether you’re working with systems developed ten to twenty years ago or even relatively new API or Web Services solutions, you’ll likely need the expertise and skills of a specialist to connect your world.
As of 2020, there were just over 100,000 systems integration professionals employed in the US, and the majority only stay at a job for under two years.
Traditionally, integration has been a complex, costly, difficult to maintain undertaking. Not only was it not guaranteed to solve the problem, but it could become a problem itself (and often one more serious than the original issue).
The traditional approach to software systems integration relies on costly, time-consuming coding. But coding integrations aren’t the only way to connect legacy systems. Digibee offers low code integration consisting of a visual, drag-and-drop interface that simplifies the integration creation process.
Traditional
Integrations are custom-built by developers to connect systems based on business roles.
Digibee
Automated pipelines transform and communicate data across systems for simple integration.
The Digibee integration platform structures automations within the three lifecycle domains: Build, Run, and Monitor. Learn more.
But let’s dig deeper into why this model is the best approach to digital integration.
Digibee provides a simpler, faster way to integrate systems. Users simply drag and drop elements on a basic canvas, creating integrations an average of 10 times faster than other approaches or tools.
The Digibee platform includes specialized connectors for a diverse range of systems, business functions, data, and entities — all graphically represented for easy comprehension without the need for specialized programming skills — and ready for hundreds of different technologies and well-known applications, such as SAP, Totvs, Oracle, SalesForce, ServiceNow, and hundreds of others.
The integration platform offers data transformation components (also graphically represented) to facilitate the creation of complex data connection, transformation, and enrichment rules. These components are continually enhanced and automatically updated.
Digibee also has specialized development teams organized in tracks to create new connectors for diverse needs with specific systems and technologies. These tracks build a new connector to platform standards — with many created in just hours.
Digibee’s visual integration environment offers self-documentation capabilities not available with traditional coding solutions. The pipeline flow representation provides an easy-to-understand image of each connection’s function. This enables the creation of proprietary libraries with connections to online services like maps, social networks, or public cloud systems and facilitates digital connections between internal business functions and customers, suppliers, or partners.
Traditional
Traditional solutions rely on execution code centralized in one environment, presenting a single point of failure and exposing companies to performance loss and the high costs of infrastructure and maintenance.
The creation of high-availability environments means doubling (or even tripling) investments in hardware and software infrastructure, which increases maintenance and upgrade requirements.
Digibee
Each pipeline is completely isolated in containers (dockers) in a Kubernetes infrastructure optimized specifically for the proposed integration.
Failure of one pipeline doesn’t affect the execution of another, and in the event of a pipeline failure, a new instance is started in under a second — drastically reducing downtime and other issues.
Integrations continue to work even if the Digibee management platform becomes unavailable.
Other features of Digibee pipelines include:
Scalability
High Volume
Resilience
The average number of attacks per company climbed 31% from 206 in 2020 to 270 in 2021, and the cost of cybercrime is expected to hit $10.5 trillion by 2025.
Data security is a continually increasing enterprise concern. Digibee offers unparalleled security to minimize the chance that data will be compromised. Pipelines are isolated in containers accessible only by customers, and sensitive data flows inside containers are encrypted using our proprietary algorithm, or customers’ own encryption service.
Digibee handles all service authentication using an API Gateway at no additional cost, offering a variety of options, including basic authentication, key authentication, OAuth 2.0, and OpenID. The API Gateway also offers a range of other functions, including:
All these features facilitate high availability, security, and resilience, customized to meet the needs of mission-critical environments in any industry. The entire Digibee platform is built on state of the art architecture and proven systems engineering, created to offer the resilience needed to modernize legacy systems and guarantee performance.
The Digibee platform is designed for easy operation and troubleshooting. Using Big Data and analytics, the solution can track and monitor 100% of processed transactions.
Digibee technology is designed to offer ease of use on a DIY concept, but at the same time, take on the full responsibility of our customers’ integrations.
Minimal Commitments
Friction-free Engagement
Digibee’s business model minimizes risk and offers full transparency into costs, making it easy and painless for customers to:
The Digibee platform is licensed by the monthly consumption of pipelines — cross-system integration flows with platform-defined data transformation and enrichment logic operating in the Digibee cloud.
Each pipeline supports up to 10 concurrent transactions and can scale up to 64MB of memory in the Digibee cloud. If any pipeline needs to process more than 10 concurrent transactions or consume more than 64MB of memory, a new license is required for each range.
Examples:
If a single pipeline scales to support 80 concurrent transactions, it requires 8 platform licenses.
If a single pipeline consumes 128MB of memory, it requires 2 platform licenses.
Number of Concurrent Transactions
10
40
80
Memory Allocated to Pipeline
64 MB
256 MB
512 MB
Number of Licenses Required
1
4
8
Digibee licenses pipelines in packs of 10, 100 or 1000 units. Our platform licensing includes all these modules and services:
And although Digibee’s primary service offering is the SaaS model in the Digibee cloud, we also offer a range of customer programs.
SaaS in a dedicated Digibee cloud environment
SaaS in your cloud environment
On-premises licensing
Digital transformation comes with integration and technology modernization challenges that can present hurdles for companies of any size.
With Digibee’s enterprise integration platform as a service (iPaas), legacy systems trapped in old, expensive models gain the momentum and agility required to meet today’s business demands. New micro-services and API-based systems deliver the orchestration, performance, and resiliency that have become standard among digital winners.
The Digibee approach solves the problems associated with systems integration in an elegant, modern, and frictionless way. We resolve end-to-end integration challenges using proprietary technology to create, execute, and operate integrations while bringing order to environments that are chaotic and unstable.
Digibee integrates systems faster than traditional solutions and at a fraction of the cost, allowing your development team to focus on innovation, not problem-solving.
Book a demo with our team to learn more about our innovative integration solutions.
Solutions offered “as-a-service” are hardly new. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) are all commonplace technologies we take for granted. But new “aaS” categories continue to emerge – some of which are already widely adopted in the enterprise world.
Integration Platform-as-a-Service (or iPaaS) for enterprises offers companies new opportunities to transform the way they manage IT resources. Building on some concepts at the core of SaaS and PaaS, it offers new strategies for connecting siloed or legacy IT assets (and the business units that depend on them).
>> Book a personalized demo with our team of experts and see how Digibee’s iPaaS will bring efficiency to your business.
The short explanation: iPaaS is a technological solution that uses cloud-based resources to bring disparate IT resources and systems together and utilize all the benefits of integration in one place.
What does that mean? iPaaS is a way to integrate data and systems that lack a native means for efficiently connecting with each other to build unified workflows. It lets organizations define how independent systems should communicate, share data, and operate in tandem. iPaaS can also provide tools to help secure and monitor the integrated environments they empower businesses to build.
By design, an iPaaS is platform-agnostic and capable of creating connections between virtually any applications or resources, regardless of whether they are running in the same cloud, separate clouds, on-premises or some combination of the above. It can work with anything from cloud-native, API-first applications to monolithic legacy systems.
| Enterprise iPaaS vs. SaaS vs. PaaS? |
|---|
| An enterprise iPaaS can fill a role that these others do not. While a PaaS provides a simple solution for application development and deployment, and a SaaS lets users host software in the cloud without the need to deploy or manage it themselves, neither addresses the need to integrate multiple applications. That’s where enterprise iPaaS comes in. An enterprise iPaaS solution ensures secure, reliable connections between IT systems, allowing companies to leverage the power of all their applications collectively. |
An iPaaS is a category of technology, not a specific product, and there are multiple ways to implement an iPaaS. Nonetheless, every iPaaS should offer a core set of features:
Connect Siloed Systems
Allows disparate applications or resources to communicate and share data in a systematic way
Align IT and Business Goals
Allows IT teams to collaborate with other stakeholders to identify and implement valuable integrations and maximize ROI
Facilitate System Monitoring & Management
Enables teams to monitor integration performance in near-real time, track updates
Connect Disparate Units
Facilitates cooperation between discrete business units by connecting systems and data
Accelerate Deployment & Updates
Simplifies and reduces time spent on deployment and update processes
Support Continual Improvement
Allows teams to optimize applications over time through point-to-point observability and automated remediation
The features discussed in the previous section may help clarify what constitutes an iPaaS, but connecting those features to real-world business goals is the best way to demonstrate how an iPaaS offers value to an organization.
There is frequently a disconnect between the way businesses develop and deploy applications and the way they use them.
Traditionally, apps have been developed on a case-by-case basis – each created to serve a specific business need. This strategy has resulted in significant functionality overlap between applications, leading to a great deal of redundant effort.
| Example: A company with dozens of apps that each include a payment processing component might be spending time and money to create and maintain that functionality in each app from scratch. |
But in a composable architecture, functionality is split into discrete units that are shared across applications. So when developers create a module to handle payment processing, that module can be used in every application requiring that functionality, decreasing the resources needed for both development and maintenance.
Composable applications offer a wide range of benefits over traditional design and development strategies:
One of the reasons composable applications aren’t used everywhere is because integrating and managing so many different units of code is such a steep challenge. For composable apps to work, developers need the ability to:
With an iPaaS solution in place, developers have all the capabilities needed to connect, manage, secure, and update modules in a consistent, systematic way without compromising on functionality.
Businesses today typically need to deliver a consistent user experience across a range of different platforms including PCs, tablets, smartphones, and Internet of Things devices. Omnichannel is the new normal. Consumers expect to be able to reliably, intuitively interact with your business regardless of how they engage with your systems.
But organizations with established IT environments that weren’t designed with omnichannel initiatives in mind can face steep challenges. Delivering a consistent experience for users via applications that are each reliant on their own code and data stream (and in some cases, data structures) is not easy. Guaranteeing that experience will also be fast and reliable is even harder.
And to make things even more complicated, many business applications are in a continual state of evolution. Building manual integrations to deliver a consistent end-user experience becomes a never-ending game of cat and mouse, as an update in one application prompts a domino effect of update requirements across other apps to maintain the omnichannel experience.
An iPaaS solution can help eliminate many of the application-level barriers to an omnichannel strategy. Teams can define integrations between applications once, then keep them in sync even as the apps themselves evolve. And the composable nature of iPaaS integrations makes reusing components across applications a simple process, ensuring users have the same functionality and data access across all apps.
An agile business is a competitive business. Companies with the ability to react rapidly to changes in the market or their customer base have a better chance of success.
Unfortunately, IT systems are often one of the weakest links in the business agility chain. Reliance on siloed applications means that companies must update every app individually – a time-consuming prospect – to deploy new functionality. At the same time, a siloed organizational structure makes it difficult for various business units to understand what others are doing and identify efficiency and cost-saving opportunities.
Complex enterprise software systems can make business agility even harder to achieve. When special expertise is required to manage and connect each business-critical platform with others, it can be challenging to update IT systems to support business strategy pivots.
With iPaaS, business platforms like enterprise resource planning or point of sale systems can be integrated in weeks rather than months or years – a significant advantage when goals shift suddenly or companies make internal organizational changes. The ability to execute business functions in parallel within an iPaaS platform also facilitates rapid data transfers, ensuring that IT systems are supporting, not hindering, operations.
And because an iPaaS serves as a central platform on which applications can be built, run, and monitored, it empowers stakeholders, developers, and IT teams to collaborate in a common space when defining and implementing changes required to meet changing demands and new goals.
The power and benefits of an iPaaS solution could help your organization achieve its business goals, regardless of company size or vertical. At Digibee, we offer an innovative iPaaS model that can help your business address systems integration challenges faster and more efficiently than any other solution on the market today, creating integrations up to ten times faster than other tools with our automated, system-agnostic pipelines.
Book a personalized demo with our team of experts and see how Digibee’s iPaaS will bring efficiency to your business.
Integrations have always been a major challenge in the information technology world. But where, in the past, integration issues were specific to certain use cases, today they affect companies of all sizes across all industries.
No longer simply a convenience, integrations now must connect in a dynamic, flexible way as they play a critical role in the success (or failure) of digital transformations that businesses need to compete.
This need for dynamism is a requirement in today’s infrastructure. But it is not included in the traditional approach to APIs — meaning they fall short when trying to keep pace with changing technology.
Yes, in the past, integration solutions have been achieved without addressing the flexibility problem. The Enterprise Service Bus, for example, replaced specific activities and added a layer of governance to the integration process. But traditional integration solutions have never yielded the dynamic flexibility that is now mandatory.
>> Book a personalized demo with our team of experts and see how Digibee’s iPaaS will bring efficiency to your business.
API management emerged as a concept aimed at simplifying integrations and freeing applications from siloed, monolithic architecture with a language to facilitate communications between systems. It offered improvements in governance, security, and documentation.
It’s not a coincidence that most organizations today employ API management to modernize system integration architecture, in most cases deploying an API gateway to securely connect internal assets and provide a common standard for both customers and partners accessing data via APIs. The API gateway offers a medium between internal and external worlds, but its fundamental purpose was never to create an end-to-end connection between them.
When companies rely on API gateways to serve as integrators, they exceed the scope of the original tool, and the result is almost inevitably failure under the strain.
The thin outer layer created by the API gateway does not, on its own, address the need for end-to-end integration between dynamic endpoints. More is needed.
As companies expand their scope to include new internal processes, external cloud systems, and partner ecosystems, it becomes increasingly critical to deal with the exponential increase in the volume of integration points and barriers to reconnecting services.
These new requirements demand a new type of architecture — one that can deal with the dynamic nature of digital connections and recognize that integrations occur in multiple, interconnected spaces. Fortunately, these solutions already exist.
An enterprise integration platform-as-a-service solution (iPaaS) allows organizations to develop, secure, and manage integration flows that connect disparate applications, systems, services, and databases, simplifying every aspect of system integration:
| API Management Only | Digibee iPaaS | |
|---|---|---|
| Facilitates rapid API creation and lifecycle management to support a variety of use cases | X | X |
| Offers an intuitive visual interface based on low-code concepts to abstract integration complexity | X | |
| Includes ready-to-use components to reduce the effort and time needed to complete tasks | X | |
| Employs new technologies (like Kubernetes) to scale according to demand with high levels of resilience | X | |
| Secures data across hybrid environments with different user roles, encryption tools and privileged credentials | X | |
| Serves as an accelerator, freeing development teams to dedicate themselves to innovation | X |
This type of platform covers and replaces the key features of traditional integration scenarios like Message Queues, Service Bus, and File Management to reduce or eliminate friction that occurs when connecting any type of IT asset, legacy or not.
Enterprise iPaaS offers a truly efficient strategy: using all available tools to solve purely technological needs while facilitating more effective use of human and financial resources.
The benefits of a modern integration platform over traditional approaches or reliance on overstretched tools can’t be understated. But if you’re not sure between an enterprise iPaaS and an API management solution for your company, consider the following as you weigh your options:
Digibee’s innovative iPaaS helps your company address integration issues more efficiently than any other solution on the market. Our visual drag-and-drop interface empowers team members of all technical skill levels to create integrations up to ten times faster than other tools, and our automated, data- and system-agnostic pipelines are scalable and resilient to ensure your business is ready for anything.
To learn more about iPaaS and if it might be right for your organization, book a demo now.
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