Many businesses around the world are currently facing the same challenge. How do businesses and IT teams across many organizations establish an integrated network that matches the flexibility of cloud applications? While you may have several highly functional cloud applications which cover finance, customers, logistics and eCommerce aspects individually, it is not guaranteed that all these applications will be able to work together effectively. This is a major problem because if you can’t access and share important information between these key business areas, their ability to be useful drops dramatically. So, what can businesses do to prevent this issue from becoming damaging?
An ideal approach to meet this challenge is through the adoption of an iPaaS solution. Firstly, what does iPaas stand for? And what are some of the iPaas benefits that you can incorporate across your company?
iPaaS stands for integrated Platform as a Service which means it is a cloud-based integration technique which has the ability to link applications, data and processes more quickly and effectively than traditional, conventional platforms. When it comes to effective iPaaS use cases, the best ones are able to integrate not just your cloud application, but your on-prem ones too. With great ease and efficiency, your organization can start making cloud-to-cloud, cloud-to-ground and ground-to-ground integrations quickly and seamlessly as just one of the main iPaaS benefits which will be available to you.
What is iPaaS vs PaaS?
More and more companies are now using iPaaS solutions for their integration requirements, with mobility-as-a-service now expected rather than preferred, and it is only expected to become more popular as time goes on. Data integration can occur between either on-premise applications and cloud applications or between the cloud applications themselves. With this integration in place, data is then synchronized in real-time on both ends creating a profitable method in which to exchange data within an enterprise. This can be both internally or externally between a CRM/eCommerce and ERP/ Marketplace applications.
This is where organizations can look to enhance their integrated approach in order to deal with the challenges brought about by the hybrid ecosystem of cloud and on-premises applications. iPaaS provides a combination of different capabilities that are generally found in data integration tools, API management platforms, ESBs, B2B gateways, and managed file transfer products. This approach also supports organizations to avoid point-to-point integration challenges since the design, as well as administrative functions, are all centralized preventing this issue from materializing.
Meanwhile, Platform as a Service (PaaS), refers to just one cloud-based toolset that enables developers to manage services. With this approach, the focus is on one portion of a development project, rather than an entire infrastructure as a whole. It is singular rather than all-encompassing. PaaS allows developers the freedom to change and upgrade operating systems, still remaining collaborative, without the need to disrupt an entire system. In comparison to this, iPaaS combines several platforms, utilizing the same benefits as PaaS, only on a broader, more inclusive scale.
The Benefits of iPaaS
As previously mentioned, there are many benefits to utilizing an iPaaS platform including improved agility, speed, and better financial elements to cloud services supporting businesses create a digital transformation. Here are some of the most pressing iPaaS benefits that can help you business to grow in the coming year:
Improved Efficiency: The most important benefit of iPaaS is that it helps seamlessly connect different software applications and synchronize data. This cannot be emphasized enough as your IT team does not need to constantly switch between systems to find the information they need. Instead, with iPaaS, all your data can be accessed from a more centralized location, allowing you to have much greater visibility of your business operations through comprehensive reports. The user-friendly and intuitive design of this solution enables businesses to more quickly link processes with multiple systems in a cost-effective way, as opposed to everything being individual and disparate.
Better Scalability: A further reason for your business to adopt iPaaS is scalability. This means your business can expand without having to worry about setting up another custom in-house integration, slowing the process and complicating the structure once again. It allows your business to grow to meet demands, without the laborious effort to provide the structure to do so. As long as your future applications are available on the network, your integration platform can grow alongside your business, rather than in spite of it.
Easier Decision Making: iPaaS significantly reduces the gap between data entry and business intelligence. All this means that your organization has the opportunity to track real-time data and make quick, informed judgments that are as accurate and up-to-date as possible. Since iPaaS solutions operate on the cloud, data can be accessed from multiple devices and from any location, it isn’t limited to being in one specific place as on-prem services does. This kind of access means that the time it takes to find relevant information is cut down dramatically, giving you an edge when it comes down to good decision making.
Cost-Effective: iPaaS also removes the reliance on recruiting expensive developers to generate code for customized, bespoke integrations. Solutions are accessible as monthly or yearly subscriptions in the cloud, meaning it is an extremely cost-effective policy that can be instilled in a much shorter time frame. An iPaaS vendor or partner can help to take care of the overall maintenance as well as the storage of your interconnected data. This removes a huge financial burden, but also an operational one, in turn allowing your employees to better allocate their for critical tasks they were hired to do, rather than menial, repetitive, and laborious data-centric ones.
Final Thoughts
The benefits which iPaaS can have for your organization far outweigh the traditional and archaic ones many businesses still have in place regarding their disjointed services. In turn, iPaaS offers the framework to integrate SaaS, first-party services, and legacy systems with scale and speed helping to grow your business immediately, yet also cost-effectively. When looking at all these benefits put together, iPaaS has already begun to gain more interest for both large companies and global corporations, but it is only a matter of time before begin to implement this approach and reap the rewards.
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