Integration Platform as a Service: Moving
Integration to the Cloud
Gartner RAS Core Research Note G00210747, Massimo Pezzini, Benoit J. Lheureux, 7 March 2011
Integration platform as a service (iPaaS) is a suite of cloud
services aimed at addressing a wide range of cloud, B2B, and
on-premises integration and governance scenarios.
This research provides user organizations’ CIOs, CTOs, enterprise technology architects,
integration competency center/service-oriented architecture (SOA) center-of-excellence (COE)
managers, B2B integration managers and project leaders, as well as IT providers’ planners,
with an analysis of the evolution, adoption trends and industry impact of this innovative
approach.
Key Findings
• An iPaaS consolidates multiple cloud services in a suite aimed at the integration and
governance of any combination of on-premises and off-premises applications, SOA
and cloud services, processes, and data, within or across organizations. An iPaaS
complements the application-development- and hosting-oriented application platform as a
service (aPaaS).
• An iPaaS is an evolution of integration as a service, which has been widely adopted for
e-commerce B2B and cloud services integration.
• Midsize enterprises will endorse iPaaS first. Large organizations will prevailingly look at
iPaaS as complementary to traditional application infrastructures.
• Many iPaaS offerings will also be available in the form of products (cloud-enabled
integration platforms [CEIP]) to be deployed in private clouds or to implement new iPaaS
offerings.
Recommendations
• Users should initially consider iPaaS primarily to support integration and governance in
e-commerce B2B scenarios, or where at least some of the involved applications are
cloud-based. These are the most-proven use cases for iPaaS.
• However, users should also plan for a major revision of their integration and governance
strategies, as iPaaS offerings evolve into end-to-end alternatives to traditional platforms.
• Users must plan for a long-term coexistence of their established integration and
governance infrastructures with iPaaS-based approaches.
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• Providers of application infrastructure, software as a service
(SaaS), packaged application, system integration, cloud services
brokerage and cloud services should look at iPaaS as a new
business opportunity and an enabler for value-added offerings.
STRATEGIC PLANNING ASSUMPTION(S)
By 2016, at least 35% of all large and midsize organizations
worldwide will be using one or more iPaaS offerings in some form.
ANALYSIS
What You Need to Know
An iPaaS is a set of cloud-based services providing a multitenant
and elastically scalable platform (in the cloud) to support a variety of
integration scenarios:
• Cloud to on-premises
• Cloud to cloud
• On-premises to on-premises
• E-commerce B2B integration
In addition to a set of integration services, iPaaS provides
cloud-based services aimed at enabling design time and
runtime governance of the integration artifacts (process models,
compositions, transformation and routing rules, service interface
definitions, SLAs, policies, etc.) utilized to address specific
integration issues.
Although iPaaS is a fledgling market, it inherits and builds on the
well-established integration-as-a-service market. While some
components of the iPaaS vision — particularly those focused on
the integration functionalities — are already available from many
providers, more functionally complete iPaaS offerings will emerge in
the 2012 to 2013 time frame.
In the short term (through 2013), leading-edge user organizations,
looking for greater flexibility, faster time to market, support for new
cloud-centric business models and cost reduction should look at
iPaaS approaches as potential alternatives to traditional (that is,
non-cloud-based) integration and governance platforms for an
ample set of requirements.
Given the nascent state of the market, mainstream organizations
should consider iPaaS offerings as complementary to traditional
platforms, and primarily adopt them to address low-risk scenarios,
such as e-commerce B2B integration and cloud services
integration. Directly stemming from long-lasting industry experience
with integration as a service, these are the most-proven iPaaS use
cases so far.
All users should take into account that even limited iPaaS adoption
will require the extension of the responsibilities and skills of
established integration competency centers and SOA COEs to
cover the new approach, in addition to traditional platforms.
Over time, iPaaS technology and business models will mature and
vendor offerings will evolve to be able to support a greater variety
of use cases, including several aspects of traditional on-premises
scenarios. Meanwhile, growing user adoption of SaaS, evolving
requirements for more tightly coupled multienterprise B2B
integration, the necessity for improving agility in relationships with
business partners and continued pressure for cost reductions will
make the iPaaS value proposition increasingly compelling, even for
users with large and long-established integration and governance
application infrastructures.
Therefore, longer term (2015 and beyond), users should prepare
for a potential major rebalancing of the center of gravity of
their integration and governance strategies between iPaaS and
on-premises platforms.
Application infrastructure middleware vendors, SaaS providers,
packaged application vendors, system integrators, and integration
brokerage and cloud services brokerage providers should look at
iPaaS (also in the form of its rendition as an on-premises product, a
CEIP) both as a business opportunity and an enabling platform for
their value-added offerings.
Introduction
When it comes to application infrastructure, some of the burning
questions that organizations are asking themselves include:
•
If I host some of my application functionality in the cloud, how
do I integrate that with my existing on-premises applications?
• How do I integrate my on-premises application with external
business partners?
• Everyone is talking about platform as a service (PaaS). Should I
use it? If so, when, and when not?
In this research, we address these questions by introducing the
concept of iPaaS, a specific form of PaaS targeting integration
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and governance requirements, and how it can be used to address
cloud-to-on-premises and other related requirements.
PaaS: An Evolving Market
In Gartner’s view, the architecture of cloud computing is structured
in three foundation layers:
• The system infrastructure service layer (commonly referred to as
infrastructure as a service [IaaS]), providing the core computing,
networking and storage services
• The application infrastructure service layer (usually called
PaaS), implementing database management system (DBMS),
application server, application security, messaging, business
process management (BPM), managed file transfer (MFT), B2B
integration, data and application integration, SOA governance,
and a variety of other “middle tier” application services
• The application service layer (mostly known as SaaS), delivering
user application functionalities such as ERP, CRM, human
capital management (HCM), collaboration, Web conferencing,
e-mail and a myriad of other scenarios, including for specific
vertical markets
While SaaS and, to a lesser extent, IaaS are widely adopted by
the user community, PaaS is less well-understood and certainly
not as popular as the other cloud layers. This is in the nature of
the middle-tier services it provides, which are not oriented toward
end users (like SaaS) and cannot easily be used to support the
deployment of existing applications, such as IaaS.
PaaS is in its infancy, and most mainstream users only have
a vague idea of what it is. Moreover, its intended audience is
primarily the development community of architects, project leaders
and developers (in end-user organizations or those working for
independent software vendors [ISVs]/service providers) focused on
implementing new, cloud-based application systems, which are still
a minority (albeit growing) of the total number of new development
projects.
Toward PaaS Suites
A factor that may slow down PaaS adoption is the extreme
fragmentation of the market, with dozens of vendors providing
individual PaaS functionalities (MFT, DBMSs, messaging,
application servers, data integration, B2B integration, BPM
technology, etc.). However, few (if any) providers deliver a
comprehensive and integrated PaaS offering. This situation is
acceptable in the initial stages of the PaaS life cycle, when users
and vendors are still primarily experimenting with the concept,
testing technologies and business models, and piloting applications
and offerings. However, such fragmentation will be impossible to
deal with when users and service providers start to implement
large-scale, business-critical applications requiring the simultaneous
and in concert use of multiple PaaS capabilities (for example, user
experience, application servers, DBMSs, security and messaging).
Developing, deploying, running, managing, monitoring and paying
for an application built on PaaS services from four or five different
providers deployed in multiple and geographically dispersed data
centers, would pose a number of intractable performance, security,
availability, management and billing issues. Implementing business-
critical applications with stringent quality-of-service requirements
on a multivendor, best-of-breed, distributed PaaS would be nearly
impossible and certainly extremely impractical.
For this reason, Gartner predicts a rapid aggregation of PaaS
offerings into suites of functionalities, providing users with well-
integrated and optimized platform services (from the same or
different suppliers), colocated in the same data center to provide
appropriate levels of performance, security, manageability and
availability. This aggregation process will take place in steps.
Initially (circa 2013), PaaS functionalities will consolidate around
specific usage scenarios. Later (2015 onward), comprehensive
PaaS offerings will also emerge. These will provide suites of
integrated and colocated services, capable of supporting multiple
usage scenarios and project types out of a common technology
foundation.
Comparing aPaaS With iPaaS
The PaaS market will change from the current and growing number
of vendors providing point services to a relatively low number
(probably a few dozen) of vertically integrated PaaS suites (each
aggregating colocated services from a “suite master” and from
its partners), delivered to users through a variety of direct and
indirect channels. The challenge for users will be the transition from
integrating point PaaS services, to support specific requirements,
to the problem of managing coexistence, interoperability and
federations of vertically integrated PaaS adopted by different
development teams or embedded in various cloud offerings.
The trend toward specialized PaaS suites is already visible in terms
of vendor strategies and available or announced offerings. At least
two classes of suites are beginning to conceptually materialize to
respond to well-defined user requirements:
• The aPaaS suite, which is aimed at providing users with
an integrated platform for hosting, and managing individual
applications and application services. The aPaaS offerings
typically aggregate cloud services of application server,
application development tools, composition, portal and user
experience, orchestration, data management, application
security, and others.
• The iPaaS suite, which is meant to provide users with an
integrated integration and governance platform for making
independently designed applications and services work
together. The iPaaS offerings usually combine cloud services
for protocol bridging, messaging transports, transformation,
routing, service virtualization, adapters, orchestration, partner
community management, MFT, registry/repository, development
tools and others.
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Other similar suites (for example, targeting BPM, collaboration
and other usage scenarios) are likely to emerge during the next
two or three years as technologies and offerings mature and user
requirements and usage patterns manifest and crystallize.
What Is iPaaS?
An iPaaS combines integration and governance and other
capabilities to respond to emerging user requirements to procure,
deploy and manage these functionalities as a single, integrated
infrastructure. This requirement is a consequence of the growing
adoption of SOA, which postulates a strong tie between integration
and governance. The best practices, which have matured in more
than a decade of SOA experience, remain valid as cloud computing
comes into the picture. Gartner believes that users will continue to
address integration and governance in a unified fashion, even in
an increasingly cloud-centric world, and, consequently, will favor
vendors capable of providing all (or at least most) of the relevant
cloud services as a consolidated platform. However, many vendors
and users initially will selectively provide and consume only subsets
of a full iPaaS, while they climb the learning curve of this new
market.
Therefore, Gartner defines iPaaS as a suite of cloud services
enabling development, execution and governance of integration
flows connecting any combination of on premises and cloud-based
processes, services, applications and data within individual, or
across multiple, organizations.
Dissecting the Definition of iPaaS
Let’s dissect the definition of iPaaS and clarify a few points:
• An iPaaS provides users with a combination of cloud services
— collectively called integration platform services — to develop,
execute and manage integration flows (that is, custom-
developed software and metadata implementing the “integration
logic” needed to connect multiple applications by performing
the appropriate message transformation, routing, protocol
conversions, service virtualization, orchestrations, security
federation, usage tracking, administration, monitoring and
management etc.).
• The integration flows running on iPaaS can connect, in a
many-to-many fashion, any combination of on-premises and
off-premises applications, services (in both the SOA and cloud
senses of the word), processes and data. Integration flows
can be developed by the iPaaS client (which has access to
the iPaaS development environment) or by a service provider
(including the iPaaS provider itself) on behalf of the client. If the
development environment is only available to the iPaaS vendor
(and not to clients and other service providers), the offerings are
referred to as “embedded iPaaS,” because their capabilities are
only available embedded in a broader service (e.g., integration
brokerages or cloud services brokerages; see below) delivered
by the iPaaS provider.
• An iPaaS supports integration within the same organization,
as well as across multiple organizations, in a B2B fashion that
often involves the e-commerce supplier and customer, but may
also include any multienterprise integration and collaboration.
•
In addition to integration platform services, an iPaaS provides
governance platform services, including registry/repository,
artifacts life cycle management, policy management and
enforcement, as well as the extraction of the associated data.
The iPaaS governance platform services can potentially be
used independently from the integration platform services — for
example, to support or enforce governance processes of an
SOA initiative using a classic on-premises SOA backplane.
•
Ideally, iPaaS services are delivered to multiple concurrent
communities of users (tenants) in an elastic, scalable and self-
service fashion, with assurance of tenant integrity, security and
service levels. Many iPaaS implementations do not currently
support all these attributes, but most likely will do so over time.
Contrasting iPaaS, Integration Brokerage and Cloud
Services Brokerage
The commercial offerings of iPaaS vendors are typically
complemented by training, support, consulting, traditional system
integration and other services, such as certain aspects of IT
management and operations.
It is important to emphasize that an iPaaS, per se, doesn’t provide
the service of integrating a specific set of applications for a certain
user organization (for example, the integration of a company’s SAP
on-premises instance with its salesforce.com instance in the cloud).
An iPaaS provides the development tools, execution environment
and governance capabilities that end users or service providers
can leverage to implement and support such a specific integration
scenario.
However, in many cases, vendors will provide (as a service running
on their own or a third-party’s iPaaS) “prepackaged integration
flows” (often referred to as cloud streams when at least one
of the endpoints is a cloud service) meant to accelerate the
implementation of the most-common integration scenarios by
customizing, extending and configuring predefined integration flow
templates. These prepackaged specialized integration modules
are basically iPaaS applications, and are not a part of iPaaS, but
convenient add-ons for integration specialists. As such, they are
closer to the SaaS layer of the cloud-computing architecture than
to the PaaS layer.
Integration brokerage providers offer the full spectrum of IT
services capabilities to implement, manage and support end-to-
end integration solutions (including the professional services and
outsourcing aspects), either on top of their own proprietary (and
often embedded) iPaaS or by leveraging, transparently to the
user, one or multiple third-party iPaaS offerings. However, some
integration brokerage providers — typically, system integrators
— allow users to select which iPaaS to use on the basis of
criteria such as cost, technical affinity, SLA, geography or vertical
specialization.
Cloud services brokerage providers may combine iPaaS-based
integration services with other cloud services (including aPaaS
and others) to provide users with end-to-end solutions to specific
business problems that involve the consumption of services from
multiple cloud services providers.
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Why iPaaS Is Relevant for Users
An iPaaS provides the capabilities to support, in a public or private
cloud, a variety of integration scenarios (cloud to cloud, cloud
to on-premises, on-premises to on-premises) within the same
enterprise, e-commerce B2B integration, and the appropriate
governance aspects (see Figure 1). The obvious benefit for users
is that they don’t need to procure, deploy and manage hardware
and application infrastructure software in their own data centers, as
they would when adopting traditional, on-premises integration and
governance platforms.
Initially, iPaaS Targets B2B and Cloud Services
Integration
The notion of running integration flows on a third-party integration
platform provided as a service is well-understood and proven,
because it’s very commonly used in the context of e-commerce
B2B integration and, increasingly, for cloud-to-on-premises
integration (also known as cloud services integration). Vendors
addressing e-commerce B2B integration (e.g., Crossgate, E2open,
GXS, Hubspan, IBM-Sterling Commerce, Seeburger, Liaison
Technologies and SPS Commerce) and those targeting cloud-
services integration (Appresso, Dell-Boomi, IBM-Cast Iron Systems,
Informatica, Fiorano, Infoteria, iWay Software, Jitterbit, Microsoft,
Pervasive Software and Vigience) have been offering at least some
of the iPaaS integration platform service capabilities (previously
referred to in Gartner research as integration as a service) since
the early 2000s. Therefore, we consider these vendors to be iPaaS
providers, although they may not provide all the capabilities of a
full-fledged iPaaS yet.
Historically, on-premises integration middleware vendors and
integration-as-a-service providers were, in principle, different
companies, even if some integration-as-a-service players (e.g.,
IBM-Sterling Commerce and GXS) used to also sell application
infrastructure products, such as B2B integration software or cloud
integration products. Like integration as a service before it, iPaaS
is, to a certain extent, a complementary alternative to classic
integration middleware. However, for the near future, traditional
on-premises infrastructures and iPaaS-based integration will coexist
and complement each other, especially in large organizations.
It is also likely that, at least in an initial phase, iPaaS offerings
will be more rapidly adopted to support specific scenarios, like
cloud to cloud, cloud to on-premises and traditional e-commerce
B2B integration, given their affinity with traditional integration as
a service. In other scenarios, such as systematic integration of
on-premises applications or SOA infrastructure deployments,
for many users, the most comfortable option will remain the
deployment of traditional on-premises integration middleware (or, in
the future, some form of private iPaaS).
Acronym Key: A2A — application to application
Source: Gartner (March 2011)
Figure 1. Deployment Scenarios for iPaaS
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However, individual PaaS services will mature, their aggregation
into more functionally complete iPaaS will progress, the offerings
of established integration-as-a-service vendors will evolve and new
players will enter the market. Therefore, end users and service
providers will increasingly look at iPaaS as a viable alternative to
traditional application infrastructure middleware (enterprise service
bus [ESB] suites, B2B integration software, MFT, data integration
tools, SOA governance platforms and other technologies) for a
wider range of use cases.
An iPaaS Will Be Pervasively Used for Multiple
Scenarios
Most large organizations have sizeable and widely adopted
integration infrastructures and SOA governance platforms in place;
therefore, it is unlikely that they will fully migrate all their applications
to an iPaaS during the next three to five years. However, large
organizations will familiarize themselves with cloud computing
and expand their use of SaaS applications. Therefore, they will
increasingly look to iPaaS to address requirements for which iPaaS
is a proven and economically attractive alternative to traditional
integration middleware. These include, but are not limited to, cloud
services integration, e-commerce B2B integration, integration of
remote subsidiaries or federated SOA support.
Large organizations will also look at iPaaS to extend their current
environment with functionalities (for example, certain aspects of
SOA governance like registry/repository and artifacts life cycle
management) that, in certain cases, would be too expensive or time
consuming to implement in a traditional fashion. At the same time
large enterprises currently using integration-as-a-service platforms
will naturally and incrementally extend the use of these offerings
to support requirements with close affinity with e-commerce B2B
and cloud-service integration (for example, integration of remote
subsidiaries or SOA federation support). This trend will accelerate
as providers expand the reach of their platforms toward a more
comprehensive set of iPaaS functionalities.
Midsize organizations with minimal or no investment in application
infrastructure middleware will probably adopt iPaaS more rapidly
than large enterprises, as has been the case for integration as
a service, which has been widely adopted by organizations that
need to do e-commerce B2B integration, but lack the technical
or staffing resources to unilaterally implement B2B integration
software. These organizations are extensively adopting SaaS
solutions, and will face the issues of integrating these applications
with their established on-premises systems and governing the
resulting integration flows. Therefore, they may be attracted by
an iPaaS proposition (often through an integration brokerage,
a cloud services brokerage provider or a SaaS provider), which
would enable fast time to deployment and would avoid the capital
investments and IT operation costs associated with deploying
traditional application infrastructure products and the related
hardware infrastructure.
Even users who initially see little value in iPaaS will not be able to
completely ignore this new approach within the next five years.
In fact, iPaaS capabilities will be incorporated into many SaaS
offerings (either through partnerships, OEM agreements or internal
developments), and will also be utilized by integration brokerage,
cloud services brokerage and other IT service providers as enablers
of their offerings. By 2016, at least 35% of all large and midsize
organizations worldwide will be using one or more iPaaS offerings
in some form.
Technology Context for iPaaS
Schematically, we can say that cloud applications will run on one or
multiple aPaaS offerings and will integrate with each other (and with
on-premises applications) through one or multiple iPaaS offerings,
which will also be used to manage the associated governance
processes. This is very similar to the relationship between
application servers, ESB suites and SOA governance tools in a
traditional application infrastructure middleware setting: Applications
run on application servers, are integrated through an ESB suite
and the relevant governance processes are managed through SOA
governance tools. The analogy doesn’t stop there, however.
Next-Generation iPaaS
ESB suites require a platform middleware foundation providing
transaction management, clustering, load balancing, high availability
and monitoring/management. In many ESB suites (e.g., Software
AG’s webMethods Integration Server, Progress Software’s Sonic
ESB), such a foundation is implemented as embedded (custom or
third-party) software to which users usually do not have access.
However, in other ESB suite products (e.g., IBM’s WebSphere
ESB, Oracle’s Oracle Service Bus), the foundation services are
provided by an enterprise application server (IBM’s WebSphere
Application Server and Oracle’s WebLogic Server, respectively) that
is also commercially available as a stand-alone product.
Analogously, iPaaS requires a foundation infrastructure providing
the cloud attributes of elastic scalability, multitenancy support,
cloud transaction processing, provisioning, metering and billing.
In some cases, these cloud attributes are implemented by means
of embedded custom or third-party software. In other cases, the
cloud attributes are provided through a high-control aPaaS, either
from the same vendor or from a third party (that is, iPaaS from
one provider can be implemented on top of the same provider’s
aPaaS or on the aPaaS of a different provider). If an iPaaS provider
wants to have maximum control over the underlying infrastructure,
but doesn’t have the skills or resources to develop the cloud
attributes, then it may decide to source a cloud-enabled application
platform (CEAP; application infrastructure middleware providing,
among other things, the cloud attributes “as a product”) from an
OEM, rather than developing and running its iPaaS on a third-party
aPaaS.
More modern iPaaS offerings are typically implemented through
a CEIP, which is essentially a software platform implementing
the integration platform services, governance platform services,
ancillary functions (management, administration, security) and the
underlying cloud attributes of iPaaS. Therefore, iPaaS providers
have implemented (through internal developments or by adopting
third-party technologies) a full CEIP, or at least the integration
platform and governance platform services that are then deployed
on a third-party aPaaS (or CEAP). It may well be that some
providers decide to make a business out of selling the CEIP
underlying their iPaaS offerings to other service providers or to
end-user organizations. In this way, service providers will be able
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to implement a compatible iPaaS service, extended with their
own added values (for example, to serve geographies or vertical
industries that the original iPaaS vendor cannot, or doesn’t want
to, target). End users may deploy the iPaaS vendor’s CEIP in their
private clouds, to provide a private (or community) iPaaS to their
internal users or partners.
“Legacy” iPaaS
Many iPaaS implementations for e-commerce B2B integration have
been around for up to 10 years; thus, they have been implemented
via a wide range of scalable, multitenant implementations of
technology that combine high-capacity communication middleware
(e.g., to support various B2B protocols), high-throughput integration
middleware (e..g, to implement message transformation),
community management and all the ancillary functions (security,
management, etc.) required to support multiple, large-scale B2B
projects on behalf of dozens, hundreds and sometimes even
thousands of B2B communities, often with a broad international
footprint. Most of these implementations have been modernized in
some fashion (e.g., to improve availability and scalability and add
new features, such as process visibility), but still combine legacy
technology (e.g., electronic data interchange [EDI] mailboxes
on mainframes) with modern technology (e.g., intelligence and
provisioning tools running on an SOA infrastructure). Many
deployments leverage geographically distributed, multisite
disaster recovery capabilities, sometimes spanning multiple
continents. While increasingly scalable and reliable, many of these
implementations are not “pure” cloud implementations (that is, they
lack cloud attributes, such as elasticity, APIs and self-provisioning).
Industry Impact of iPaaS
The concept of iPaaS is in its infancy, and very few vendors and
users even recognize the term. However, Gartner believes that,
during the next three years, a recognizable, sizable and vibrant
iPaaS market will be well-established.
The iPaaS Offerings Are Under Construction
Evidence of the iPaaS market emergence includes, but is not
limited to:
• The precursor integration-as-a-service market is well-
established, which proves that, technically, the iPaaS model
can work; sizable (approximately $945 million in revenue in
2009), which proves that customers are willing to adopt iPaaS-
style offerings; and supported by well-entrenched and powerful
vendors, such as GXS, IBM-Sterling Commerce, E2open,
Crossgate, Liaison Technologies and others.
• Although the traditional e-commerce B2B integration
subsegment of the integration-as-a-service market is only
modestly expanding in terms of revenue (primarily owing
to price erosion, not because of lower adoption), the cloud
services integration submarket (epitomized by vendors such
as Dell-Boomi and IBM-Cast Iron) is growing by double digits,
although from a small installed-base, which proves there is a
growing appetite for cloud services integration delivered in the
form of a cloud service.
• Although e-commerce B2B integration and cloud services
integration are the two dominant scenarios for integration-
as-a-service adoption, there are already examples of user
organizations supporting on-premises-to-on-premises
integration requirements, using iPaaS offerings from providers
such as E2open, Hubspan and Liaison Technologies. Typically,
such on-premises integration projects are implemented in
conjunction with some form of B2B integration initiative.
• Some traditional and open-source integration middleware
vendors already deliver (partial) iPaaS capabilities (e.g., Cordys,
through the Capgemini Immediate cloud services brokerage
offering, based on the Cordys BOP application infrastructure
platform; iWay Software, with its iWay Service Manager offering;
Mulesoft, with its Mule iON offering; and Tibco Software,
with its Tibco Silver PaaS offering), or have announced their
intentions to enter the iPaaS market. More announcements and
product releases are expected from application infrastructure
middleware vendors during 2011.
• Traditional data integration vendors, such as Informatica and
Pervasive Software, have proven as-a-service of their traditional
on-premises data integration middleware versions (Informatica
Cloud and Pervasive DataCloud, respectively).
• Cloud-focused startup companies and system integrators, such
as Appresso, Infoteria, Jitterbit and Vigience, have entered the
cloud services integration market with on-demand offerings, in
addition to traditional middleware products.
•
In 2010, IBM acquired Sterling Commerce, one of the top two
e-commerce B2B integration providers, and Cast Iron, one of
the most notable emerging cloud services integration vendors.
This is an indication of IBM top management’s growing
perception of the iPaaS market as a strategically relevant
opportunity, particularly if it successfully marries its e-commerce
and cloud services integration assets to address hybrid usage
scenarios.
•
In 2010, Dell acquired Boomi, one of the leading cloud services
integration players, to expand its cloud offerings.
• At PCD10 in October 2010, Microsoft announced a plan to
release a technology preview of the Microsoft Azure AppFabric
Integration Service in 2011. This will be based, in part, on Azure
AppFabric Container aPaaS. Microsoft also announced its
intention to release the Azure AppFabric Integration Service in
the form of a CEIP.
•
In February 2011, Software AG announced its intention
to release an “integration and SOA platform as a service,”
beginning in 2012, as part of its PaaS strategy, which will
also include process modeling, monitoring, development and
execution services. These offerings will be based on the current
ARIS (process modeling) and webMethods (integration and SOA
8
enablement/governance) application infrastructure middleware;
however, they will be deeply re-engineered to support the
cloud attributes, while maintaining backward compatibility.
Software AG’s announcement is an example of the emerging
consolidation of integration and governance functions in iPaaS.
• Cloud services brokerage providers will be incorporating a
combination of SaaS, aPaaS, iPaaS and IT services to deliver
their solutions. Many e-commerce B2B integration service
providers will modernize their solutions with native cloud
support, governance technologies and other new capabilities to
evolve into cloud services brokerages. Because many of these
B2B integration service providers already contribute heavily to
the multimillion dollar integration-as-a-service market, as they
evolve into cloud services brokerages, they will continue to
contribute to the iPaaS market.
Providers Will Get Into iPaaS Along Multiple Strategic
Directions
The materialization of iPaaS suites will, in many cases, happen
through the gradual extension and aggregation of established cloud
services. For example, some integration-as-a-service vendors will
incorporate governance platform services in their offerings, whereas
some of the cloud messaging-as-a-service (MaaS) vendors, such
as Amazon, my-Channels and StormMQ, will add more iPaaS
capabilities on top of their core messaging platform services.
In some cases, iPaaS will be implemented by re-engineering,
refactoring and extending traditional integration and governance
platforms into CEIPs.
Vendors with a middleware background will initially focus on
providing the integration platform service aspects of an iPaaS,
whereas SOA governance vendors will primarily aim at the
governance platform service capabilities. However, both classes
of vendors will expand the reach of their offerings to cover more
iPaaS capabilities, leading to some vendor and technology
consolidation. The largest established application infrastructure
middleware vendors and integration-as-a-service providers have
the skills and the resources to release an iPaaS offering, providing
both integration platform services and governance platform services
within the next 12 to 18 months.
Although, by definition, an iPaaS should be able to cover all
integration scenarios, to concentrate their resources and efforts
(or for historical reasons), many vendors will address only selected
scenarios (for example, classic e-commerce B2B integration,
cloud services integration, SOA federation or SOA governance).
The iPaaS providers targeting large organizations will look at
traditional on-premises-to-on-premises application integration or
SOA backplane scenarios only as secondary markets. Vendors
focused on serving midsize organizations are likely to also address
on-premises-to-on-premises scenarios as a primary opportunity,
given the level of user appetite for SaaS applications and the
relatively scarce adoption of integration middleware
Some application integration middleware vendors may not be
familiar with cloud business models, or may not have enough
resources to start up a parallel as-a-service business line; or may
want to prudently move into the cloud arena without running into
the risk of cannibalizing their established businesses. Therefore,
these players may decide to focus on delivering the enabling
technology for iPaaS (that is, a CEIP), rather than adopting an
as-a-service business model. Through a variety of commercial
agreements, they will delegate to third parties (e.g., IT service
providers, telcos, IaaS providers, integration brokerage providers,
cloud services brokerage providers and other entities) the
implementation of (possibly multiple, largely compatible and
competing) iPaaS services on top of their CEIPs. CEIPs will also
be adopted by end-user organizations to implement private or
community iPaaS, therefore slowly replacing traditional forms of
integration-oriented application infrastructure middleware (e.g., ESB
suites, B2B integration software and SOA governance platforms).
Finally, iPaas offerings and CEIPs will be sourced from an OEM
by packaged application vendors and SaaS providers to support
the implementation of multienterprise business applications, or to
provide their customers with a platform to address heterogeneous
integration requirements (much in the same way as packaged
application vendors provide integration middleware as an integral
part of their products or as an option).
Adoption Scenario
In terms of the burning issues introduced at the beginning of this
research (“How do I integrate cloud-based applications?,” “How do
I integrate with my external business partners?” and “Should I use
PaaS, and when?”), Gartner believes that:
• Via the predecessor integration-as-a-service offerings, iPaaS
already is (and will increasingly be) one of the main options
available to users to connect with external business partners
and to integrate cloud-based applications with their current
on-premises applications.
• For many user organizations, iPaaS will be the first approach
to PaaS. Virtually all user organizations (large or small) must
integrate applications, and, in a growing number of cases,
at least some of these applications are in the cloud. New
application development still takes place on a massive scale
in some industry sectors (such as financial services, telecom,
Web commerce, online gaming, social networks, cloud services
and others), but most mainstream enterprises primarily look
at packaged software and, increasingly, at SaaS as the main
sources of new application functionality. Therefore, there likely
will be more organizations considering PaaS, because they
are looking to solve an integration problem, than there will
be users evaluating PaaS for new application development.
Hence, many user organizations will initially move into PaaS
by adopting an iPaaS to address cloud integration issues (and
also given the high cost and complexity of traditional integration
platforms), rather than by selecting an aPaaS to support new
developments.
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The key factors slowing down adoption of iPaaS in the early stages
of this new market will be:
• Excessive market fragmentation
• The sheer number of startup companies with unproven
technologies and incomplete offerings
• Providers shifting business models and pricing options
• Security, privacy and SLA concerns
• Uncertain ROI of iPaaS adoption
• The inertia of the traditional integration-oriented application
infrastructure middleware installed
However, in the 2012 to 2013 time frame, as an increasing number
of traditional application infrastructure middleware vendors enter
this market, a cycle of consolidations, mergers and acquisitions will
kick off. The emergence of relatively few large iPaaS “suite master”
providers, supported by a large partner ecosystem (providing
services that are colocated and integrated with the “master” iPaaS),
will bring more confidence to mainstream user organizations, and
widespread adoption will take off as large organizations adopt
iPaaS (public, private or community) to support a wider variety of
project types, not just for a few selected use cases.
Until that happens (circa 2015), iPaaS will mostly be a market
for leading-edge users and midsize companies, as well as a
complementary opportunity (e.g., for e-commerce B2B integration,
cloud services integration or SOA governance) for mainstream
organizations.
For most large organizations, the coexistence of possibly multiple
iPaaS and traditional application infrastructures will be the norm.
Therefore, established integration competency centers/SOA
COEs will have to face the challenge of supporting technology,
organizational and governance federation of their established
integration and/or SOA backplane infrastructures with iPaaS.
The convergence and consolidation process toward iPaaS will be
turbulent. Many providers will disappear; in the race to leadership,
vendors will bring to market immature technologies; some mergers
and acquisitions will fail; some vendors will not be able to effectively
scale up their platforms to support large cloud workloads; and
other vendors will struggle to provide quality support to a growing
number of clients.
Along with analyzing an offering’s functional and nonfunctional
fit with their requirements, user organizations considering iPaaS
should carefully evaluate vendors’ track records in their vertical
sectors and geographies, as well as the providers’ ecosystems, to
minimize the risks and maximize the benefits of iPaaS adoption.
Waiting too long for the maturation and consolidation of the
market may be dangerous for organizations as their competitors
move ahead with leveraging iPaaS to try to reduce costs, improve
efficiency and creatively build competitive advantage. In the trade-
off between technology and vendor risks and improved efficiency
and efficacy lies the key to successful iPaaS adoption.