Key integration trends in 2014: Rise of iPaaS, API management, and mobile middleware

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA: The ever-increasing complexity of integration along with persistent budget and time constraints is forcing IT to rethink integration strategy.

Ovum's Integration 2014 Trends-to-Watch report predicts that the growing need for greater flexibility and total cost of Ownership (TCO) reduction will drive enterprises' investments in integration infrastructure modernization, including a shift to hybrid integration and new mobile middleware paradigms.

Integration 2014

- Integration PaaS (iPaaS) continues to evolve as a suitable option for a range of integration needs. IT needs to consider a shift to a more flexible approach delivering faster time-to-value and the requisite scalability and performance at a lower TCO and iPaaS can fit the bill.

iPaaS is a "good enough" approach for SaaS and less complex on-premise and B2B integration and can also meet basic social and mobile application integration needs. The global spend on cloud-based integration platforms (including iPaaS) is expected to increase by 45 percent in 2014.

- API management will emerge as a key enabler to digital transformation. 2014 will see enterprises across different vertical industries participating in the growing API economy, including as API providers focused on driving innovation via partner and third-party developer ecosystems.

API management will provide the required security, governance, and performance management framework to ensure that enterprise API initiatives stay on track and deliver competitive advantage to enterprises embarking on digital transformation initiatives.

- Time and budget constraints will drive a shift to hybrid integration middleware paradigms.Given the persistent time and budget constraints, enterprises are not inclined to use traditional integration approaches for hybrid integration scenarios (a mix of on-premise, cloud, B2B, and mobile and social integration).

IT should understand that only a suitable combination of traditional and cloud-based integration platforms (for example, the "ESB/SOA plus iPaaS" combination) could fulfill hybrid integration needs. 2014 will see an increasing number of integration processes moving to the cloud and "hybrid integration middleware" paradigms will no longer be uncommon.

- A middleware layer can ease mobility integration. A holistic enterprise mobility strategy should focus on exploiting mobile middleware to ease interaction with backend applications and enforce uniform governance polices across the ecosystem. SOA, as a component of mobile middleware layer, can be used for exposing functionality and data associated with different enterprise and SaaS applications as a layer of standards-based reusable services.

Mobile backend-as-a-service (MBaaS) can simplify setting up of mobile backends, a pain point for mobile application developers, and help deliver a near-native application user experience while providing secure access to scalable cloud-based storage.

 

Saurabh Sharma, senior analyst in Ovum's IT Solutions team, says: "In 2014, the combination of social, mobility, and cloud will continue to drive changes in the way organizations conduct business while providing opportunity for early movers to achieve business growth in emerging areas and via new channels.

"IT needs to develop and implement a holistic integration strategy evaluating the current state of integration infrastructure against current and imminent business needs to fill gaps in integration capabilities with suitable alternatives such as iPaaS. Furthermore, interest in API management is expected to increase as enterprises focus on exploiting the ever-evolving API economy and improving their positioning in the digital value chain.