The time has come for a Super iPaaS

One of the best parts of my job is the time I spend talking to customers about their business challenges.  Much of the discussion of late has been around two topics: first, and increasingly, I’m hearing from executives about the challenges of systems that simply are not talking to each other, and, secondly, AI and what it will mean for business with their need to innovate. Turns out, these two topics are very much related. 

I don’t think I need to state the obvious:  in today’s world, everything must be connected — every app, data set, event, system…everything.  The connected enterprise facilitates agility, productivity, and governance — and delivers on the promises of digital transformation.   

Yet, more and more, I hear from customers that the connected enterprise seems more and more unattainable.  When speaking with one customer, he told me, “Sanjay, I can’t get my data pipes to work,” which was making his existing challenges with CDW (Cloud data warehouses) even worse…and he was worried. He told me that he can’t get his mission critical stuff working well enough to even think about innovating.   

I listen to the people responsible for these companies and I hear their desperation, frustration, and a never-ending feeling of not having enough control. Not being able to go fast enough and about falling behind. Being seen as a barrier to innovation rather than an enabler.   

And, what about AI and how is it related to this enterprise pain?  For all the benefits we are already seeing from AI — speed, insight, proactivity — I hear from CIOs, CDOs, and CSOs that they are losing sleep at night trying to keep up with all of the demands. Business units are turning to Gen AI to help them innovate faster in an effort to keep pace.  And, the idea of citizen developers who — armed with generative AI — will be able to publish code into the IT stack; code that is uncontrolled, unregulated, and has risk written all over it.  They are rightly worried not about IF but HOW it will impact governance, compliance, security, privacy, and resilience. 

The pace of today’s integration complexity is accelerating, adding to existing chaos and technical debt.   The current integration solutions are not meeting these challenges.  Why?  While there has been justified acceptance by customers of integration platform-as-a-service approaches, many of today’s iPaaS solutions have not delivered on their promises and are too often limited to integrating cloud-only solutions — and those will never be sufficient for HYBRID environments.   

We work with the world’s leading companies who operate enterprise-class, true hybrid IT environments that run from modern cloud solutions all the way through legacy customer applications, on premises, and on mainframe systems. These enterprise customers need a way to scale and accelerate transformations. That requires near-autonomous, dynamic integration approaches that will help CIOs manage the chaos and shift the dynamic back to driving business outcomes with agility, productivity, and governance. 

To accomplish this, a new category of integration solutions is required — at Software AG we call this Super iPaaS.  We see this new category as driving needed simplicity into today’s integration complexity.  And to operate at enterprise scale, we see a core set of minimum requirements to play in this new space:

To participate in this new category will require a depth of enterprise integration experience as well as software engineering and architectural expertise that goes far beyond the abilities of some of our competitors in the iPaaS space who talk about business outcomes but have limited capabilities to be a solution for today’s hybrid enterprise. To be “super” we see a need to bring all five of these core principles together.   

So, what does that mean for customers who are currently struggling to keep up with the demands of the business?  A Super iPaaS will: 

• Create agility from a unified integration platform that enables seamless data flows across apps and data stores with a broad set of capabilities and a centralized UI which simplifies learning, management, and collaboration with integrated support for APIs with apps and data to enable rapid cloud adoption.  
• Allow you to develop integrations anywhere, and deploy everywhere, with reuse instead of rebuilding.   
• Drive productivity to innovate and differentiate, enabling the delivery of new digital services, impactful and fast decision-making, and the elimination of bottlenecks.  
• Empowers Gen-AI enabled integration that allows business technologists to quickly create integrations by automating workflows from description to deployment.  
• Allows governance over your enterprise with centralized control and distributed execution so integrations can run anywhere without needing to move data.  
• And gives you a single pane of glass across your distributed integrations, APIs, or data pipelines with end-to-end visibility across transactions, and a unified experience for all iPaaS components to streamline observability and simplify compliance.   

Together, these benefits will enable a data-driven business and set the necessary foundation for technology leaders to keep up with the pace of innovation and deliver on the demands of the business. 

Not only did we have the vision at Software AG to identify the need for a new market category called Super iPaaS, but we are also uniquely qualified to lead the space.  Which is why we are today announcing that we will sharpen our strategic focus to lead this newly established category known as Super iPaaS as the IT industry’s number one enterprise integration company. 

Why are we uniquely qualified to establish and lead this new space?  Throughout our history, Software AG has been trusted by the world’s leading brands to help them with their most challenging software needs, most recently as their trusted partner for digital transformation.  Our existing offering of StreamSets and webMethods establishes Software AG as the leading player in the Super iPaaS market.  And while we know that others in the market will ultimately try to catch up to our vision, I’m confident in Software AG’s leadership, especially among hybrid enterprise customers, a place where much of today’s integration platforms cannot compete. I’m proud to say we can deliver today. 

Be sure to check out the blogs from our Integration General Manager Suraj Kumar to hear about what’s available today and our CPO Stefan Sigg to hear about our roadmap. And if you’re ready to have a conversation, contact us to set up some time. 

As I publish this blog from Gartner Symposium in Orlando, surrounded by customers who are expressing optimism for the future of their businesses, while doubling down on their efforts to assure their enterprises can securely, productively, and resiliently, I’m confident this new category of Super iPaaS will enable a truly connected enterprise to compete in today’s world.  I look forward to the conversations here — you can join in the discussion: Are you feeling these same challenges? Is a “super” integration strategy for enterprise hybrid environments needed?  Join the conversation on X and LinkedIn at #GartnerSYM.  I look forward to hearing from you.