SaaS and PaaS first introduced organizations to the benefits of cloud-based services, providing scalability, speed, flexibility, and massive storage capacity – all without additional infrastructure or diversion of existing resources. The next logical step, of course, was integration-platform-as-a-service, or iPaaS.
Initially iPaaS was adopted by many enterprises as means to integrating SaaS more quickly and at a lower total-cost-of-ownership (TCO). As SaaS was accepted into mainstream IT environments, it became apparent that it needed to be integrated into conventional on-premise infrastructures and eventually standard B2B resources.
This mixed environment of cloud and ground applications and databases became known as hybrid IT.
A hybrid IT ecosystem offers many organizations the perfect blend of information, infrastructure, and service — augmenting and enhancing vital on-premise legacy systems while speeding implementation and increasing storage and response time with cloud-based operations. The challenge, of course, is integrating all these often-disparate parts.
Cloud-based integration is the answer
IT integration was initially a distributed function. Stand-alone integration applications were developed or acquired and distributed out to every system integration point. It’s easy to see how this could easily get redundant, expensive and unwieldy.
The solution was to create a central, cloud-based platform that could tie together on-premise legacy systems with newer, cloud services without having to resort to those inefficient, redundant, traditional integration tools; custom API development; or additional layers of software or hardware. Cloud-based integration-platform-as-a-service – or iPaaS – was born.
An integration platform built specifically for the cloud offers three major benefits:
- Total flexibility with no additional infrastructure
- No special software development
- Seamless cloud-to-ground and cloud-to-cloud integration
The enormous value of cloud-based iPaaS is reflected in its rapid adoption and growth. According to a recent industry study, iPaaS is expected to grow over 30 percent annually for the next several years.
To learn more about iPaaS and its benefits for seamlessly integrating cloud-to-ground IT infrastructures for SMEs as well as large enterprises, download our ebook, How to Streamline IT with Cloud-Based Integration.
