Why Choose iPaaS for Your Hybrid Integration Needs?
Actian Corporation
February 28, 2019
The data your company manages is both diverse and ever-changing. Connecting source systems across hybrid infrastructure environments may seem challenging initially, but keeping your connections current with the myriad of changes occurring in your IT environment is where you will truly experience a headache.
Implementing an Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) solution, such as Actian DataConnect, can make the process much easier. It gives you a scalable set of tools to manage all your data connections, sync data in multiple systems, simplify integrated user environment (IDE) to mask the complexity of your underlying environment and enable your developers to focus on creating the features and data insights to drive your business forward.
Why is Managing Data Connections so Hard?
Cloud services, IoT devices, distributed infrastructure and mobile devices are all increasing the volume, velocity and veracity of data sources within an organization. This is a marked difference from the situation of just a few years ago when a company’s IT environment was comprised of a few core platforms and a limited ecosystem of supporting applications. With only a few data sources, managing point-to-point connections wasn’t terribly difficult and changes didn’t happen very often. Even small companies are now learning the number of systems, applications and components in their IT environments generating data are increasing at an alarming rate.
Most companies are also operating today in a hybrid IT environment, with applications and data sources residing in the cloud, on-premises in a company’s data center or hosted by 3rd parties. All of these systems must be able to communicate effectively with each other. Point-to-point connections just aren’t sustainable for the modern IT environment.
The key challenge is the rapidly changing applications and data environment. The data ingested from disparate sources (systems of record) must be transformed, harmonized and fed into different target systems. Once the data is there, each data record must be synced in the target systems. For example, changes in a record in SAP may need to be reflected appropriately in the Salesforce system. When the data is continuously changing, it means the data integration must be continuous to keep all systems synchronized.
When you extend this challenge across a complex IT environment, it is clear some sort of centralized management capability is needed.
Manage All Your Connections With a Hybrid Integration Platform
iPaaS is a managed cloud service for application, data, process and device integration.
Instead of trying to manage a complex web of point-to-point data connections, companies can use iPaaS to manage connections to source systems (i.e., systems of record) and aggregate data from their entire organization for use by applications, platforms and analytics services (i.e., systems of differentiation/innovation).
A versatile iPaaS platform must support a wide variety of enterprise-use cases, such as application-to-application integration, cloud-to-cloud, cloud-to-on-premises, on-premises-to-on-premises, data and cloud integration, API publishing, mobile, IoT integration and even ecosystems/ B2B integration with other companies. iPaaS solution should also empower all integration personas, from citizen integrator/business analysts to the highly skilled integration specialist personas, and offer low/no-code tools to accelerate integration projects within an organization.
The iPaaS solution enables a company to establish connections once, and then re-use them many times by leveraging reusable template for mapping and design. If the data in source systems change, then the connection must only be updated once and the data in all the subscribing or target systems will immediately see the impact. This saves considerable administrative effort for your IT organization and provides a powerful tool for addressing security risks.
Not only can connections be updated in scalable way, but they can be disconnected if a vulnerability is encountered. Instead of questioning whether all the point-to-point connections have been disabled, you can be confident using iPaaS.
Using iPaaS to Enable Data Migration
Leveraging an iPaaS solution to manage your data connections can make the process of data migration much easier. One of the biggest challenges in modernizing old, legacy systems and integration infrastructure is migrating data and applications from on-premises to cloud, or switching cloud providers is migrating data connections quickly, effectively and safely. An iPaaS solution enables you to reduce the number of connections that must be migrated and orchestrate the cutover more efficiently. Because iPaaS can enable you to connect almost anything, you have greater flexibility in your infrastructure choices with fewer interoperability concerns.
A scalable, future-proof iPaaS solution should also be “portable,” meaning you should be able to migrate your integration services from on-premises to cloud seamlessly with minimal effort or rework. With DataConnect, you can design your integrations once and run anywhere and take your “integrations with you” if your needs change–allowing flexibility and protecting your investments.
As companies’ data integration needs continue to evolve, leveraging an iPaaS solution, such as Actian DataConnect, can help you remove layers of complexity, improve IT productivity, respond better to security issues and enable greater levels of business agility. To learn more about how Actian can help your company, visit https://www.actian.com/dataconnect.
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