As organizations and channel partners eye the problem of tying premise-based applications and services with cloud-delivered offerings within the enterprise environment, many are considering the hosted integration platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) option as a means to ease the complexity of hybrid integration. But according to Ovum, marketing hype and confusion threaten to bog down the fast-evolving iPaaS market.
“iPaaS is emerging as an alternative to traditional integration approaches, and several iPaaS solutions can now cater for the needs of SaaS, on-premise and B2B integration, at least for integration projects with medium levels of complexity,” said Saurabh Sharma, senior analyst in Ovum’s IT solutions team, in a report. “The rise of SaaS has necessitated a shift away from traditional integration approaches as faster time-to-value remains a critical requirement and organizations continue to focus on managing the complex interplay of business needs and persistent budget constraints. However, organizations must understand that neither iPaaS nor a traditional integration approach is a ‘silver bullet’ for integration.”
With global spend on cloud-based integration platforms expected to reach $3.7 billion by the end of 2018, vendors must effectively communicate and demonstrate cost benefits and return on investment (ROI) models associated with a shift to iPaaS, or they are risking their slice of a market forecast to grow 31 percent over the next five years, the firm noted.
For instance, many vendors are touting the idea that iPaaS is not only about integration and that the term should be used for cloud-based platforms that enable development of complete business applications. Another claim is the ambitious idea that hybrid iPaaS can ease complexity of hybrid integration. Ovum said that these are far removed from the practicality and intricacies of actual implementations.
Several vendors are engaging in ‘cloud washing,’ aimed at positioning their traditional integration solutions deployed in the cloud as truly single-instance, multitenant, iPaaS solutions, noted Sharma. “Instead, [we] recommend that organizations should focus on developing a hybrid integration strategy that combines traditional and cloud-based integration approaches to deliver faster time-to-value and the cost efficiency required by tight IT budgets,” he said.
