Connected Integration In Action

Any large business today installs dozens or sometimes hundreds of applications, systems and services spread across different locations like the local data center, a private cloud, one or more public clouds and various SaaS providers. These applications and services must coexist, share data and streamline growingly complex business workflows.

To support this environment, many businesses have a disjointed mix of APIs, middleware and custom integration code that is hard to manage, secure and maintain. The complexity can cost the business IT and development resources that are better spent elsewhere. To solve this complex?challenge system integration technologies especially Cloud Integration emerged.

?What is cloud based integration?

Cloud Integration or Integration platform as a service (IPaas) has gained substantial Popularity in recent years to provide a base for many complex and various business integrations. iPaaS provides an array of available integrations with tools for users to assemble custom integrations and data flows using scripts, visual components and traditional coding faster and more easily than individual ad hoc integration efforts. A single console facilitates integration development, deployment, monitoring, logging, security and compliance. With iPaaS, enterprises can unite almost any type of application or service regardless of its deployment location.

Cloud Integration vs. Typical Integration (On-Premise):

?Before the emergence of cloud computing in the early 2000s, integration could be categorized as either internal or business to business (B2B). Internal integration requirements were implemented through an on-premises middleware platform and typically utilized a service bus to manage exchange of data between systems. With the Growing popularity of Cloud solutions over the last few years due to their capability to provide enterprises with agility and flexible scalability. On the other hand, legacy on-premises solutions also have advantages that cloud solutions don’t, such as improved reliability, security, and in-depth system control. So, decision-makers need to evaluate the differences between the two platforms to identify and implement the ideal digital infrastructure for their organization. Let’s take a closer look into the core differences that distinguish the two systems from each other.

Deployment structure:

On-Premise: In an on-premises environment. The company is responsible for operating and maintaining the physical servers and the solutions deployed in them. With in-house deployment on local servers, the organization needs team members to maintain the infrastructure and related processes.

Cloud: In a cloud Environment, the servers and the solutions are maintained off-site by the service provider. An enterprise implements the system through a subscription and can access its resources and use them at any given time.

Cost of Implementation:

On-Premises: On-premises systems need to be built from the scratch, which requires a lot of effort and comes at a heavy cost. Not only is there a significant amount of initial investment needed to get the infrastructure and processes running, but there are also additional costs of power consumption, maintenance, and operating costs.

Cloud: Organizations that implement cloud solutions only pay for the resources used, making it more cost-effective and part of the Opex instead of Capex. Setting up the infrastructure is also faster, and the enterprise needs to pay a subscription fee, and the price adjusts up or down depending on the number of resources used.

Level of Control:

On-Premises: Since the on-premises infrastructure is developed and maintained in-house, enterprises retain all their data and absolute control over the entire system.

Cloud: For a cloud infrastructure, the data ownership is not clear. While the company owns the data stored on the cloud servers, with the data and encryption keys residing with the third-party provider, if there is any server downtime, the organization is unable to access the data.

System Security:

On-Premises: Security is an essential requirement for any organization, especially in the government and banking industries. Which on-premises environment can provide.

Cloud:?Though the Security of cloud environments is a big concern for IT Decision-Makers. Cloud environments nowadays are highly secure and we can barely hear of any cyberattacks happening for the mega cloud solutions vendors.

Regulatory Compliances:

On-Premises: Many companies need to operate under regulatory rules set by laws, regardless of their industry. To remain compliant with these governmental and industrial regulations, companies must have their data in place. An on-premises infrastructure ensures easier maintenance of this data.

Cloud: When choosing a cloud solution, the enterprise needs to ensure that the selected vendor is compliant with regulatory codes and up to industry standards. With sensitive data stored on the cloud servers like customer, employee, and partner data, the vendor must adhere to proper privacy regulatory guidelines.

Infrastructure Accessibility:

On-Premises: While on-premises systems can be accessed remotely, but often requires third-party gateways to make that possible. The requirement for additional third-party solutions introduces added points of security risk and communication failures.

Cloud: For a cloud system, all it takes is an internet connection to access data and resources from the system. The vendor provides the necessary security protocols and communication gateways, making the system more flexible and mobile for the end-user. The flexibility enables employees to work from anywhere at any time.

?Advantages:

Cloud integration was basically created to break down the data silos, improve connectivity and optimize the business process. Cloud integration has increased its popularity as the usage of Software as a Service solutions is growing day by day, and because it has so many advantages over the other integration solutions like:

Accessibility: As an online system, accessibility is the most significant advantage that a cloud solution provides by allowing users to access the system at any time from anywhere.

Cost Efficiency: There are no upfront costs associated with cloud hosting, and users only need to pay the regular subscription fees, which fall under operating expenses.

Maintenance: With a cloud solution, vendors take care of the entire process of maintaining and updating the system.

Scalability: Without a physical system, cloud technologies provide users greater flexibility to scale with growing demands.

Less Complexity: iPaaS is a low-code, no-code solution, which means that you won't need highly-skilled specialists or custom API connections to integrate your data.The vendor has already done all the hard work for you in developing the technical side of the integrations.

Getting More From Your Tech Stack: iPaaS enables your SaaS apps to talk to each other and exchange data, so you can get more from each app.

Fix and Remove Data Silos: A data silo is a collection of data that one department has access to but others do not. This can reduce transparency, efficiency, and trust within the organization. Data silos also consume your resources as you pay for extra data storage and the cost of inefficiency.

Improve Customer Experience: ?All Customers expect consistency when interacting with multiple departments of the same company. In order For this to happen, all departments need access to the same data. By syncing your customer support systems to your other tools – including your CRM, billing system, and phone apps – you create a centralized database with data for every contact. This means that anyone who answers a customer support inquiry can quickly understand the full picture and provide the best service based on previous interactions. Increase Security and Compliance: iPaaS systems give you more control over your data. This means a clearer view of the data your organization holds in every app and increases your scope for keeping it clean, secure, and compliant with regulations like GDPR. Manage Integrations in One Place: Before Cloud Integration your business would be left managing multiple integrations with different setups and rules. But with iPaaS, you can manage all integrations on one centralized platform to know exactly what's running and what needs optimizing.

Use Cases

?Application-to-application integration:

Cloud Integration or iPaas most obvious use is to connect applications or systems for data sharing. Enterprise application integration (EAI) techniques and APIs have long served this purpose, but iPaaS offers a single common platform. The applications, services, and data may be located in-house, in the cloud, and in almost any number of outside SaaS offerings.

Microservices integration:

A microservices architecture offers a modular means to develop and deploy applications as groups of interrelated and scalable services. Microservices typically use containers for virtualization, and microservices modules?communicate and inter-operate through APIs to create the overarching application. With iPaaS, a business can automatically generate and publish the APIs to support the microservices application, which reduces the need to design and build APIs and accelerates the business' ability to develop microservices applications.

B2B integration:

Businesses increasingly rely on diverse third-party partners for access to outside services, applications and data. iPaaS has proven an effective means to handle such business-to-business (B2B) integrations, and allow disparate applications to communicate without the need to architect a common API or hand-code proprietary integrations.

Data integration:

The ability to share or move data from one application or system to another sounds simple, but quickly becomes complicated. For example, one application uses data in one format and another application anticipates data in another format, but both applications need current data in real time. Cloud integration can help to manage data format translations and even perform data validations within real-time data synchronizations.

Platform integrations:

The increasing diversity of emerging enterprise IT, with local, remote , public cloud, and hybrid cloud platforms, imposes unique requirements for communication and data. iPaaS connects local-to-cloud, cloud-to-cloud (multi-cloud) and hybrid cloud platforms. For example, businesses that use enterprise service bus or other traditional integration schemes in-house can leave those legacy integrations in place and onboard iPaaS for local-to-cloud and cloud-to-cloud connectivity.

Multiple cloud integrations:

This is an advanced use case of cloud-to-cloud (multi-cloud) integration. Consider a business that extensively uses a public cloud provider's resources and services, and must integrate those with resources and services of other clouds, such as myriad different SaaS providers. Integration of many unique data stores in many different locations and in countless different formats can prove impractical for manual or custom-developed integrations. While this is a complex and uncommon example, Cloud Integration can resolve such complexity as it creates, implements and manages many different integrations within the same platform.

Who uses Cloud Integration:

A recent study by IDG and TeamDynamix showed that 89% of companies worldwide struggle with Data and System Integration. The?Joint study found 66% of companies will invest in iPaaS to address data integration and automation challenges; another 27% already have. Here is some examples of the early adopters of the technology:

Lufthansa Cargo: The company began its digital transformation journey years ago, but the pandemic accelerated the need to modernize additional processes to easily support rapidly changing global conditions. Before the pandemic, Lufthansa Cargo used several legacy applications to support its business processes. IT had to react on very short notice and adjust its systems within days while keeping operations stable and performing day-to-day.With its new infrastructure, Lufthansa Cargo’s integration platform is now cloud-ready, and it has moved closer to its cloud-native goals. By moving to the cloud, the carrier can easily lower costs and accelerate service capabilities. Mindtree's devOps support for the core cargo applications helped accelerate transformation and significantly reduce Lufthansa's time-to market.

Odin Group: Headquartered in The Netherlands, Odin Groep develops, manages, and hosts online IT services for millions of business professionals and students.The group was trying to provide cutting-edge IT services to customers while working with outdated technologies within its own enterprise. With the legacy application foundation unable to support daily business operations, including CRM-related processes, Odin Groep needed a solution that would enable its employees to better carry out their tasks — such as everyday business management and planning, as well as managing stock and orders.With a new iPaaS in place, Odin Groep was able to seamlessly integrate their data and applications across all three of their companies. Their new foundation was easy to use, faster, and more affordable; and could be leveraged by employees group wide without the need to know how to program, accelerating application deployment and lowering costs.

MetCash: Metcash, Australia's leading wholesale distribution and marketing company, was looking to become a more agile business to achieve faster delivery and lower costs. It wanted to onboard new customers faster and offer them improved services with less downtime, but this required re-engineering systems at the core of day-to-day operations. Its legacy architecture, including an aging enterprise service bus (ESB), was holding the wholesale giant back from achieving its long term goals. Metcash adopted a hybrid cloud solution to simplify and modernize application integration. With a cloud-ready platform, it would have the flexibility to deploy the same code in containers either on-premises or in the cloud. With its new hybrid deployment combining Metcash's legacy architecture and the modern capabilities of cloud, microservices, and containers, the company is adding new customers and suppliers faster and offering them more services with less downtime. Thanks to easier development and reduced defects, the unified development team is delivering new integrations at about half the cost and 20% faster than before.

United Delta Capabilities with Cloud Integration:

?Our mission is to enable businesses to achieve success, keep up with the competition and successfully implement their digital transformation initiatives. We are keen on coordinating client's needs with the best technologies in order to boost efficiency & simplify business. We’ve Attracted hundreds of?the best qualified regional resources from multinational companies to setups in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Netherlands. As Technology-Agnostic System Integrator we don’t favor one vendor over another. We always choose which fulfills the client’s requirements and needs. This is why we have a retention rate of more than 99%.

The increasing popularity of Cloud Integration made us move quickly to be the first to adopt this technology, we’ve delivered dozens of Cloud Integration projects with 100% success rate in different industries like Telecom, Banking, Aviation, Insurance and also in governmental entities.United Delta is ready to kick off your next System Integration project. For further inquiries about United Delta’s System Integration consultants, please visit our website https://www.uniteddelta-me.com/