Four Common Gotchas for Integration as a Service

Integration as a service still isn’t quite as popular as, say, CRM, but it has matured considerably since the concept was first introduced, experts say.

TechTarget spoke with several experts, including Ovum Senior Analyst Saurabh Sharma, about integration platform-as-a-service adoption.

Interestingly, what led to the technology maturing wasn’t end-user adoption, but SaaS companies packaging integration with their solutions, Sharma said.

Obviously, that sort of “integration-to-go” approach works for customers who don’t want to tackle integration as a core competency, but just want the service to work with other cloud services or on-premise services.

But despite the progress iPaaS has made, it’s still not something most enterprises are embracing as a stand-alone option, the report notes.

For those interested in moving integration to the cloud, the piece outlines four common gotchas:

1. People underestimate the trouble they’ll have migrating integration away from a traditional infrastructures. For instance, security becomes a bigger concern immediately for iPaaS.
2. IPaaS isn’t yet able to handle large transaction volumes at a fast pace, warned the CTO at one cloud service broker.
3. Some are moving integration to the cloud just to be in the cloud. Again, on-premise and iPaaS aren’t exactly the same thing, at least in terms of what IT needs to consider and in terms of volume capability. So beware of moving just to move.
4. Failure to recognize that iPaaS is still part of the application lifecycle management. “Even though iPaaS is rightfully a part of ALM, iPaaS as it’s being used today is probably used too often as a Band-Aid for some specific problem rather than an element in the reorientation of ALM practices for the cloud,” warns Tom Nolle, who is president of strategic consulting firm CIMI Corp.

The article explores all of these issues in more detail and includes a discussion on when iPaaS is a good option.