Future-Proof Your Integration Strategy With Cloud-Native iPaaS

According to Gartner’s most recent Market Share analysis, the integration platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) is the fastest-growing segment in the software integration space. Since Microsoft projects more than 500 million new applications will be built within the next five years, connecting these applications in real-time becomes more critical.

This requires a shift in thinking. Integration used to be a build-once-maintain-forever business line, but the exploding number of connections makes an integration fabric necessary.

Cloud-Native to the Rescue

Organizations adopting a cloud-native software supply chain are gifted with fabrics that build and ship applications faster, more efficiently and reliably.

While these achievements are great for the operations side of the business, they can cause trouble elsewhere. Data and application integration teams cannot keep up with the exploding number of new applications, connectors and data volumes. With about 30,000 SaaS products on the market, it’s not uncommon for large companies to manage thousands of applications.

Data and integration teams often evolved from data integration teams (ETL) that had to create a few APIs or process a few events and messages bus. Neither their tools nor skill set allows the rapid fabrication and shipment of hundreds of complex real-time data pipelines.

Core integration requires a mindset shift, where legacy systems from the finance, healthcare, or other specialized industries need to be rapidly integrated with hundreds of cloud and in-house applications. The same approach used in the software delivery supply chain needs to be baked into the iPaaS space.

Kick-Starting a Scalable iPaaS With Kubernetes

Companies should do more than containerize integration software and deploy it into Kubernetes. Their entire integration ecosystem should adopt a cloud-native mindset. That might include declaring integration logic with frameworks such as Apache Camel K instead of coding everything from scratch. Or developing directly in Kubernetes for fast onboarding and short testing iterations instead of long overnight build pipelines. Or they might use GitOps best practices for continuous software rollout, including a monitoring strategy.

Some organizations might find it impossible to go the cloud-native route while rebuilding their integration solution. The team might lack the skill set to put all the pieces together, and other topics, such as governance and security, might be too critical to handle internally.

In this case, cloud-native integration software vendors can help make the technology accessible to everyone. They offer options that combine all the open-source pieces – as Red Hat or Talend did two decades ago – but with a cloud-native approach. The community has created the foundation with Kubernetes, Apache Camel, ArgoCD and others.

Reasons for a Cloud-Native Integration Strategy

Adopting a cloud-native iPaaS platform allows companies to integrate with their broader software deployment processes, including CI/CD pipelines, deployment, monitoring and other day-two operations, such as backup and updates.

For many industries, integration solution usage will drastically fluctuate over time. In the finance and manufacturing industries, the organization may only operate during working hours. Scaling capability not only cuts costs but also optimizes performance during peak loads.

Furthermore, the “lift and shift” strategy made possible by cloud-native solutions ensures that existing on-premises applications transition between clouds or on-prem setups with minimal disruption. And because a faulty integration system can compromise business continuity, the high availability and resilience offered by cloud-native solutions is crucial.

Unlike traditional black-box iPaaS solutions, cloud-native integration provides transparency by design, giving developers the visibility needed to debug or expand. For organizations navigating complex regulatory landscapes, a cloud-native integration platform offers the same level of automation and services of managed solutions while retaining the control and security they need.

Cloud-Washing is Not Cloud-Native

The most significant technological advancements are typically not invented by the legacy players. For example, Tesla drove innovation in the electric vehicle space although many companies with much larger resources could have done it. In the application integration market, one challenge for legacy providers – think of traditional ESBs – is their massive technical debt. Re-invention demands an incredible amount of time and energy. This is especially problematic for publicly listed corporations reporting quarterly results to demanding shareholders. Their cloud-native marketing should be approached with skepticism.

Companies should consider an open-source iPaaS, where the community spirit has created an ecosystem around cloud-native, or turn to a startup-challenging status quo.

Not being able to scale and rapidly deliver new integrations isn’t acceptable for data-driven businesses. CTOs need to act fast and bring iPaaS to the top of their minds as they are a mission-critical component of their infrastructure, where one wrong connection can bring the whole store to a standstill. Cloud-native culture within iPaaS can help to cut a corner, learn from the modern software supply chain and feed it into the integration team. That offers an opportunity to create a seamlessly connected enterprise where core integration is not a bottleneck but a driver of innovation and automation.