Cloudy with a Chance of Integration: The Great iPaaS Goldrush has Begun
May 22, 2013
Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Theo Priestley.
I was recently with a client who is looking for a new BPM solution and they have a very positive outlook towards Cloud. They love it, so much so that they weren’t interested in on-premise solutions. This represents a real shift in attitude, and the company is no slouch or tadpole in size either. And this is where iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service) is really coming into the fore and has to rule as a first-thought strategy when entering the cumulonimbus worlds of Cloud and SaaS.
In the last week both SoftwareAG (Integration LIVE) and TIBCO (Cloud Bus) have thrown down the gauntlet into the ring with IBM, Mulesoft and Informatica to name a scarce few who are already there. But why has it taken everyone so long ? iPaaS, without the vendor nonsense clouding the understanding (pun) is a solution provider’s service that allows cloud-cloud and cloud-premise integration for applications. It’s a step away from Cloud Brokerage which is essentially the development and maintenance of SaaS applications and their integration in the entirety. If iPaaS was a scarce offering Brokerage is even thinner on the ground (however take a look at Accenture’s play in this area recently announced in April…
But back to the client at the start of the post. Despite their pro-cloud stance tucked away in their enterprise architecture diagrams was that horrendous long box labelled ‘ESB’ and it just looked so out of place in a forward thinking strategy. And this is where iPaaS doesn’t go far enough for me. iPaaS is limited because it’s built primarily for Cloud based services. A Cloud based ESB strategy would be a welcome minimum requirement to any iPaaS solution simply because the Service Bus is one of the most overworked and overly relied on pieces of kit in an enterprise stack…
Read more from the source @ http://www.business2community.com/tech-gadgets/cloudy-with-a-chance-of-integration-the-great-ipaas-goldrush-has-begun-0502020