What is integration?
According to Wikipedia, Integration is a process that links together different systems and software applications physically, or functionally, to act as a coordinated whole. There are four approaches to Integration:
- Point-to-point - also known as app-to-app - approach involves hand-coding integration. It typically takes place within an organization.
- Middleware - whether it's called object management, event management, session management or data translation - creates a layer between applications that receives data, translates it and, transmits it.
- Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) is designed to integrate a company's back-office systems with their front-office applications using a single integration layer.
- Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) is designed to integrate across multiple cloud platforms. It often involves integration with local On-Premise technologies and multiple software such as Service as a Solution (SaaS).
iPaaS
According to Gartner, iPaaS is a suite of cloud services. It enables development, execution, and governance of integration flow by connecting any combination of On-Premise, or cloud-based processes, services, applications, and data, within an individual organization or, across multiple organizations.
Common Components of iPaaS
Integration platform typically contains a set of functional components, such as:
- Message bus for enabling reliable messaging between enterprise applications.
- Adapters to transform messages from, and to, application's proprietary protocol. Adapters often offer connectivity via common standards, like FTP, SFTP or format support, like EDI.
- Transformation engine and visualized data mapping to transform messages or files from one format to another.
- Metadata repository for storing information separated from processes - like a business party.
- Process Orchestration Engine for orchestration design and execution. In this, context orchestration is a technical workflow that represents a business process or part of it.
- Technical dashboard for tracking messages in a message bus and viewing execution history of orchestrations.
- Scheduler for scheduling orchestrations.
- Batch engine for controlling large file transfers, batch jobs, execution of external scripts and, other non-messaging based tasks.