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The Future of Integration: AI Insights from Digibee’s Head of Education & AI

In this episode of “Integration. Redesigned.,” our host, Chief Marketing Officer Cait Porte, talks with Fabricio Inocêncio, Head of Education & AI at Digibee, on the role of AI in integration. The discussion covers Digibee’s innovative approach – leveraging AI in integrations and simplifying development processes. They discuss the impact of AI on the developer community, and the potential future directions of AI in both business and personal tasks. As Digibee aims to simplify tasks for and empower development teams, the episode also highlights how AI has been a natural evolution for Digibee in achieving that goal.


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Full transcript

CAIT PORTE

Hello and welcome back to Integration. Redesigned. I’m your host, Cait Porte, and it is wonderful to have Digibee’s Head of Education and AI on the podcast today. Welcome back, Fabricio.

Fabricio Inocêncio

Hi, Cait. Thanks for having me.

CAIT PORTE

Thanks for being here. Today we’re going to talk about AI related to integration, and you’ve been doing a lot of work related to integration. Digibee has launched and will be launching some amazing new features related to AI. To start off, talk about the process that you use, and the team uses, in coming up with innovative ideas around AI.

Fabricio Inocêncio

Okay, perfect. When we think about product innovation, it’s fundamentally to identify and cover pains and unmet needs, and there’s a lot of opportunities there, right? But, when we see some technology emerging, we have some other opportunities for a more technology-driven approach. What we are doing right now is reassessing the existing problems that we already identified from customers and figuring out how we can address new solutions for these problems with deep learning, machine learning techniques, and AI. This can provide an opportunity by reshaping these existing problems with completely new things and how we can come up with different solutions and rethinking the features that we already have planned.

Imagine what could not possibly be done before smartphones. Just because we have smartphones, all the products and innovations that were created just addressing existing pains, but with a different solution because we have a new tech in place. Basically, this is what we are doing right now, is what can we do differently with AI? Addressing an existing pain, existing unmet needs from our customers.

CAIT PORTE

I think it’s really important when you think about the advent of technology to help enable others. One of the things that we often talk about is how AI is transformative here at Digibee, specifically on this podcast and of course in the news. We’ve launched new functionality around documentation for a variety of integration flows, making it easier to communicate what a process is doing and how and why.

Talk a little bit about what AI means at Digibee. When you think about integration and AI, what gets you excited or looking forward to the future?

Fabricio Inocêncio

Great. I think that AI, it’s part of the natural evolution of Digibee. When we see why Digibee and we see all the things that we can solve in reducing the friction from the developers in building integrations, because alternatively they have a lot of hard work on coding and because we have a low-code platform and we make that easier. The next step when we see AI-assisted products, it’s a natural evolution.

AI is definitely part of the future of Digibee when we see that we can add more capabilities and make the life easier of the developers. Some examples that you mentioned and things that we are planning, for example, integrations are messy and complex. How can we provide clarity so the developers can have better decisions related to integration? This is one of the reasons that we provide an AI assistant so the users can retrieve information about how to use the product, but also how they can retrieve information about the integration so they can better understand what’s happening in the integration. We want to avoid that AI can be like a black box. They need to audit, they need to understand what is happening. This is why we use AI in that favor, not to make that complex even more.

Finally, of course, when we see this fusion in making the life easier of the developers, how can we assist them in designing and building integration? With smart recommendations, with optimizations, but even always in the sense that we provide suggestions but the developers that have the final call related to what should be done in a specific integration context.

CAIT PORTE

Of course, there has to be human interaction. You touched upon the developer and the importance of aligning AI with developer, making an AI assistant. We know AI can be, will be transformative. Where do you see AI going in the development community over the next 6 to 18 months?

Fabricio Inocêncio

Interestingly, because we have seen a lot of good stuff being developed in the code generation. The providers are doing a great job on that, but the development community is realizing that, “okay, I can speed up my coding process, but reviewing and debugging is still painful,” mainly when this came from AI. I think that this is a great opportunity for the providers, and I mean copilots, code whisperers, and AI code generation to focus on how, from now on, AI can be less painful in reviewing debugging phase. AI can generate code, but do not provide this drawback for the users to, okay, I need to check what AI did. “Okay, I still need to check, but how can I easily check that?” I think that this is going to be the next thing, right? How can AI-generated code can be easily revealed and debugged by the user?

CAIT PORTE

I think it really speaks to adding AI as a copilot or a partner in that process, as opposed to letting AI drive everything, and I’m, of course, very excited about where we’re going.

When I think about AI, of course, I think about it in the business sense, but I also think about it in the personal sense. One thing I use AI for recently was generating a grocery store list and a meal plan for the week. If you could do one thing with AI, what would it be?

Fabricio Inocêncio

So Cait, definitely I would create a digital twin of myself. So imagine an AI version of myself, equipped with all my skills, knowledge, and even my jokes, so I can delegate some tasks for this digital twin, and even though free up time. So how can I delegate to myself and free up time at the same time? So for me, this is amazing.

Putting the joke aside, actually, this is what AI is doing, right? Climbing the cognitive ladder, but actually step by step, and task by task. We already can delegate tasks, right? But we are still delegating under adult supervision. But sooner, when we have something called AGI, artificial general intelligence, and this arises, probably this product of digital twin of ourselves can be possible, right? But, we are still already seeing things coming in that way. Right?

CAIT PORTE

AI is still in its early days. We, of course, want to make sure that we’re policing what’s going on, right? Being a little careful about how we’re using it, but always fun to dream.

Fabricio, thank you so much for joining today.

Fabricio Inocêncio

Thank you. Thank you, Cait.

CAIT PORTE

Thank you all for joining. This has been another episode of Integration. Redesigned. We’ll talk to you next time.

5 Best Integration Platforms 2024

The rapid pace of innovation for integration technology continues unabated. Just a few short years ago, enterprises were committed to cumbersome, on-premises products that required a significant (and ongoing) investment of time, resources, and budget.

Today, enterprise integration is an innovation enabler, helping organizations to digitally transform while accelerating critical technology advances. 

No longer married to legacy on-premises technology, enterprises are rapidly shifting to the cloud. Modular IT infrastructure supports greater agility and speed, ensuring a profitable and enduring successful business. 

This updated buyers guide provides a detailed overview of integration platforms so you can compare vendors based on these important key considerations:

  • Ease of implementation
  • Price
  • Scalability
  • Security
  • Compliance

What is an integration platform?

Platform integration connects independent software applications to streamline interactions between each app. 

There are many different types of integration technology available today, including:

  • iPaaS: A suite of cloud services enabling development, execution, and governance of integration flows connecting any combination of on premises and cloud-based processes, services, applications, and data within individual or across multiple organizations. [1]
  • Enterprise service bus (ESB): An architecture that supports centralized components that perform application integrations.
  • API management platforms: Connecting two or more applications using their application programming interfaces (APIs) to exchange data.

With the shift to cloud-based operations, iPaaS technology is leading the trend.

iPaaS has moved to early mainstream adoption globally, reaching 20% to 50% of the global target audience who will use iPaaS offerings to integrate not only applications and data, but also ecosystems, APIs, and business processes.

Gartner Hype Cycle for Cloud Platform Services 2022

Top Five Enterprise Integration Tools

The Digibee Integration Platform

KEY FEATURES

  • Born-in-the-cloud platform: easily build integrations with reusable pipelines and capsules
  • Low-code interface: No specialized training required, all developers familiar with JSON will be comfortable with Digibee
  • Automated alerts: Pre-emptive monitoring of mistakes for immediate resolution
  • Global configurations: Manage accounts, API keys, and multiple instances from a single dashboard with on/off toggles for common settings
  • Digibee execution panel: Safely test integrations and apply global parameters, deploy in seconds
  • Single real-time dashboard: Monitor and troubleshoot integration pipelines across multiple projects, view performance metrics at a glance,classify errors and automate response mechanisms, use pre-built connectors to send data to ticketing systems such as JIRA
  • Learn more

REVIEWS

PROSCONS
– Authentically born-in-the-cloud platform
– Implement in weeks versus months (or years)
– Works in tandem with existing legacy iPaaS solutions to fast-track stalled innovation initiatives
– Accessible to developers of all skill levels, no expensive training or certification required
– Simple, all-inclusive pricing model that includes maintenance and support
– While rapidly gaining market share, Digibee is new to the market
– Technology focuses exclusively on integration versus broader capabilities such as API management

CUSTOMERS

PRICING

Digibee pricing reflects a contemporary “all in one” model that provides free access to the most recent product innovations and capabilities. The pricing is incredibly simple, requiring only three SKUs with no limitations. Rather than charging for potential maximum usage (typical pricing model for legacy iPaaS solutions), Digibee customers pay only for what they consume.

The pricing model is based on the provision of pipelines and Runtime Units (RTUs), as follows:

  • Pipeline: An integration pathway that uses a sequence of components to connect systems and establish data flow between them
  • RTUs: Runtime Units that support capacity requirements based on concurrent transactions and/or memory

SKU #1

Get Started Bundle

10 pipelines, 20 production RTUs, 10 test RTUs

SKU #2

Additional Pipeline

Additional pipeline, includes production/test RTUs

SKU #3

Additional Capacity

More RTUs as needed within production/test environments

As the customer’s integration strategy expands, additional pipelines and RTUs are added as needed. This ensures the customer only pays for what they use, with per unit pricing going down as the implementation grows.

Digibee customers access all features and capabilities at no extra charge. A new customer can get started with SKU #1 for less than $60,000 USD, including:  

  • Digibee-hosted iPaaS
  • All support and maintenance, 24/7/365, including all new features and upgrades
  • Continuous education
  • Customer enablement with direct Digibee support to design, build, test, and run integrations

Digibee provides an interactive product tour of the Integration Platform.

RATING

  • G2 rating = 4.7 out of 5

MuleSoft: Anypoint Platform for Integration

KEY FEATURES

  • Anypoint API Designer: Library of APIs, templates, examples, and connectors
  • Anypoint Studio: IDE for integration and API development with prebuilt modules
  • Anypoint Connectors: Use a web interface or a desktop IDE to integrate systems)
  • Anypoint Exchange: Marketplace for connectors, templates, examples, and APIs)
  • Anypoint DataGraph: Reuse, consume, unify multiple APIs
  • Anypoint Partner Manager: Accelerate partner onboarding, simplify partner management
  • Anypoint MQ: Messaging service for asynchronous communication patterns
  • Anypoint Code Builder: IDE to design, develop, deploy APIs, integrations, and automations

REVIEWS

PROSCONS
– A legacy industry veteran, MuleSoft has a strong roster of established customers that have invested heavily in the technology
– Mulesoft feature set is deep, extending well beyond iPaaS capabilities
– Complicated and expensive pricing model
– All software developers and architects must be MuleSoft-certified to use the technology and to engage with customer support on any matter
– End-of-life cycles are chronic and time-consuming, monopolizing expensive developer resources

CUSTOMERS

As a legacy technology vendor, the MuleSoft customer base is broad and varied. Customers featured on the company’s website include:

  • Airbus
  • Barclays
  • Citrix

PRICING

MuleSoft pricing is complicated, incorporating two different pricing models: usage-based and tiered. Customers must pay for:

  • VCore (to support product usage)
  • Edition (gold, platinum, titanium)
  • API management (based on usage and volume)
  • Integration (three different tiers)
  • API Experience Hub (for full API management capabilities)
  • Additional capabilities and add-ons are optional

MuleSoft provides a free trial of its Anypoint platform.

RATING

  • G2 rating = 4.5 out of 5
  • Capterra rating = 4.4 out of 5

For a deep dive of MuleSoft’s legacy iPaaS, read the research paper.


Azure Integration Services

KEY FEATURES

  • Logic Apps: Create workflows and orchestrate business processes to connect hundreds of services in the cloud and on-premises
  • Service Bus: Connect on premises and cloud-based applications and services to implement highly secure messaging workflows
  • API Management: Publish APIs securely for internal and external developers to use when connecting to backend systems hosted anywhere
  • Event Grid: Connect supported Azure and third-party services using a fully managed event-routing service with a publish-subscribe model that simplifies event-based app development
  • Azure Functions: Simplify complex orchestration problems with an event-driven
  • Azure Data Factory: Visually integrate data sources to construct ETL and ELT processes, accelerate data transformation

REVIEWS

PROSCONS
– Developers working within an existing Azure environment are loyal and may prefer to build and code with Azure tools
– Strong API management tools
– A large existing Microsoft customer base provides a stable foundation upon which Azure can build
– Simple tools incapable of supporting sophisticated enterprise use cases, with prebuilt connectors limited beyond the Azure ecosystem, difficult with non-API-led connections
– Each tool has its own interface to learn and manage; a deep learning curve for all users
– Numerous, complex pricing models make it difficult to monitor and control costs

CUSTOMERS

The large, existing Microsoft customer base presents significant add-on opportunities for the Azure Integration Services. Customers featured on the company’s website include:

  • Swiss Re
  • Quest
  • Mission Linen Supply

PRICING

Azure Integration Services pricing is variable. During implementation, Azure cloud services are required. Additional costs depend upon the number of paid services deployed. Ongoing costs include additional Azure cloud services. 

Azure Integration Services offers a free trial or a pay-as-you-go account to test the product.

RATING

  • G2 rating = 4.4 out of 5
  • Capterra rating = 4.6 out of 5

boomi

KEY FEATURES

  • Intelligence: Embedded AI capabilities to build faster and manage easier
  • Composability: Reusable building blocks and powerful automatability
  • Democratization: UX for all roles and skills supporting role-based access control and team-based development
  • Scale: Elastically scale as needed to handle varying workloads
  • Security: Built with enterprise-grade security and reliability
  • Lifecycle Management: Built-in versioning and governance controls of integrations, workflows, APIs, and data models

REVIEWS

PROSCONS
– Well-established within the industry with a large customer base
– Strong support for remote businesses with infrastructure that requires totally on-premises connectivity
– A viable choice for organizations that prefer to outsource integration and instead rely upon Boomi’s prebuilt connections, network of SIs and ISVs, and the Boomi marketplace
– Complexity of use with seven different point products
– Expensive with complicated pricing and licensing, each tool has its own volume-based pricing model, all support is paid
– Product roadmap weighted towards citizen developers and automation

CUSTOMERS

  • Red Cross Australia
  • MOD Pizza
  • Boise State University

PRICING

Boomi pricing incorporates a mix of tiered and volume-based pricing. Versions include Professional, Pro Plus, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus with features varying by version.

Customers must pay for:

  • Integration (features and numbers of connectors)
  • Master Data Hub (increases in data volume)
  • B2B/EDI Management (number of trading partners connected)
  • API Management (number of API calls made)
  • Flow (number of apps built)
  • Data Catalog and Preparation (number of connectors and users)

RATING

  • G2 rating = 4.2 out of 5
  • Capterra rating = 4.5 out of 5

Workato

KEY FEATURES

  • Recipe Design: Customize recipes with different triggers, actions, and other steps
  • Connectors: Includes a method of authentication, triggers, and actions for a specific app
  • On-prem Connectivity: A secure connection from within a private IT environment to connect to Workato cloud
  • API Platform: Turn API recipes into endpoints so others can easily consume data without access to a specific Workato account
  • Workbot: Build customizable workflows

REVIEWS

PROSCONS
– Known for ease of use in building automation in less sophisticated lines of business use cases that focus on citizen developers
– Majority of business is embedded with ISVs to support expansion
– Especially popular with small to medium enterprises
– Difficulty executing sophisticated enterprise integrations
– Reputation of accelerating pricing once deployed (charges for tasks and connectors)
– Incapable of deploying in a private cloud, must host everything

CUSTOMERS

Customers featured on the company’s website include:

  • Broadcom
  • Atlassian
  • MGM

PRICING

Workato pricing varies based on integrations for the business or a product:

  • Workato for Business: Start with a workspace, including unlimited apps, connections, and users. Recipes added individually or in packs (10, 25, 50, 100)
  • Workato for Products: Integrations and workflow automations built for products. Connect to thousands of apps with 24×7 support

Options include:

  • Cloud or on-premises, subscription
  • On-prem apps, databases, custom apps (connected with REST, SOAP)
  • Optional add-ons include security, operations, and more (for Business)

RATING

  • G2 rating = 4.7 out of 5
  • Capterra rating = 4.6 out of 5

What to look for in an integration platform

Clearly, integration technology platforms vary by feature set, pricing models, and other differentiators. As you build your enterprise integration strategy, consider these universal benefits: 

Compatibility

Your integration platform software must be compatible with the systems and applications you use today, as well as new innovations you will implement in the future. 

Born-in-the-cloud iPaaS systems such as Digibee natively support a composable IT infrastructure. This agile environment makes it easy to connect all systems and applications– legacy or cutting edge new –regardless if they are legacy, on-premises, or already in the cloud.

Ease of Use

Complicated technology that requires significant training and expensive certification limits the resources available to perform the work. It also results in very long implementation times for an extended go to market. 

With one of the fastest implementation times in the market, Digibee is 70% faster than legacy integration solutions. Watch the video to see how quickly developers build integrations with Digibee.

Price

For most companies, investing in platform integration is an expensive proposition. According to the Digibee State of Enterprise Integration survey in 2023, 59% of survey respondents invest up to one quarter of their IT budget on integration. 

Avoid complex pricing models, especially common with legacy solutions that tend to combine usage based with tiered pricing–a model that is difficult to monitor and control. Gartner best practices when evaluating iPaaS pricing is a helpful resource.

Maintenance & Support

Often overlooked during negotiations are ongoing costs related to maintenance and support. 

Modern born-in-the-cloud integration solutions update seamlessly, ensuring all users have access to the latest features and capabilities without investing resources (and potential downtime) to support a new software version. 

Contemporary iPaaS technology lessens the reliance on a vendor for support. This is reflected in Digibee’s support offering which is provided free of charge. With an intuitive interface and drag and drop capabilities, developers quickly learn and work on their own for expedited results. 

Try Before You Buy

Every vendor showcased in this buyers guide offers a demo and/or trial so you can test-drive the technology before you commit. Many Digibee customers began their journey with a guided, interactive tour, transitioning to a 60-minute tailored demo designed to address their specific use cases within their existing environment.

Use these resources to help inform your enterprise integration strategy:

For more information, take a look at our website or contact us to talk to our team. Good luck with your integration project!


[1] Gartner Glossary: Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS)

Foundations Workshops: For Users

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.

See other Educational Resources

Enterprise Integration: MuleSoft vs. Digibee

Concerned about the upcoming MuleSoft end of life? Digibee details 3 key differentiators to support your digital transformation efforts.

Dive into the three key elements and differences between the two iPaaS companies – price, people, and productivity with this insightful white paper, download now.