Market Predictions for the Application Integration Domain

According to Gartners glossary, application integration is the process of enabling independently designed applications to work together.

Intro

The application integration market is projected to record a 14.8% CAGR and reach US$24.3 billion by the end of 2026 (Information taken from Global Industry Analysts, Inc., www.strategyr.com).

Data is everywhere and is the basis for digital transformation. However, the massive amounts of information every business collects are often siloed and scattered across different applications and departments. This is why integration has become one of the most important points in digital transformation plans for 2021, and this will be even more valid for 2022. APIs and Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) need to be taken into consideration, as without them all you have is siloed data and dispersed systems.

Lets have a look at the majortrendsin the integration domain for 2022:

• Hybrid will continue to be the preferred model
• System Integrations will become more connected with analytics
• Cloud-ready, the Kubernetes way
• Data-centric
• No-code and low-code  citizen developers on the rise

Hybrid will continue to be the  preferred model

Enterprise systems are continuously moving to the cloud, butthe majority ofthem still have a long way to go until theyare fully cloud-based.Cloud-to-on-premises integrationwill not only be necessary in the comingyears butis expanding and evolving at high speeds.

Legacy integration solutions are not adaptive enough torespondto the needforconnecting multiple endpointson-premises orin the cloud.Even though on-premises and legacy applications are not going away soon, cloud adoption is on the rise and enterprises will need more cloud-to-on-premises integrations in 2022.Hybridintegrationplatformswhich allowon-premisessystemsto seamlessly and securely integrate with cloud-based applicationswillcontinue tobe the preferredmodelin the next year.

Aflexible integration platform, like ZigiOps ,helpsenterprisestoseamlesslyconnectcloud and on-premises applicationsandaligndata from these apps to getvaluable insights fast.

Furthermore, in a couple of yearshybrid in theintegration platformsworld will meantheyneed to become more and more flexible, allowingIoT device integration and management, together with business applications and workflows, as well as big data, monitoring apps andall types of tomorrows technologies.

System Integrations will become more connected with analytics

Application and data integration will be interconnected with analytics, as results are needed faster. Runtime analytics will be adopted more and more and will need to be backed up by integrations.

Organizations are drowned in data, and they need a way to get the insights from it fast. The old ways of collecting, integrating and storing data and then performing time-consuming analysis dont work well anymore. Decision makers seize the opportunities to execute analysis on the fly and receive the insights they need nearly instantly. A good integration platform will allow them to monitor internal and external changes automatically and make instant decisions.

Additionally, runtime analytics allows great improvements of enterprises personalization capabilities for customers and employees. Decision-makers can get real-time reports on the types of information they need, without redundant data that is not relevant to their role.

Cloud-ready, the Kubernetes way

Software is changing, APIs and connectors are changing, data requirements and governance are changing Legacy integration platforms simply cannot keep up with the pace of development of the enterprise software landscape.

According to CIO magazine over 60% of businesses are considering implementing cloud integrations. Cloud-based application integration is becoming the norm for enabling all types of enterprise apps to work together seamlessly, providing the necessary automations.

With cloud integrations, companies avoid the need to manage multiple data silos across cloud-based and on-premises apps, and it is much easier for authorized users to access business data across geographic locations.

A modern enterprise application integration platform needs agility. Containerized microservices are interchangeable and easy to scale and basically eliminate the need to migrate entire systems. Kubernetes, a portable and extensible container orchestration platform, allows a highly available, highly scalable approach, which is essential.

Kubernetes makes integrations in the cloud easier and faster, but running in an enterprise environment, it often requires transfer of data from and to other applications. Organizations might need to integrate Kubernetes with their other systems to enhance its orchestration capabilities and automate workflows. ZigiOps integration platform helps you seamlessly integrate Kubernetes with your other tools. Start your cloud trial of ZigiOps now.

Data-centric

A data-centric integration approach focuses on data that organizations need to operate with, rather than point-to-point integrations that dominated the integrations domain so far.

Being data-driven does not guarantee an enterprise is also data-centric. They can drive all their decisions from data sets and still have thousands of non-integrated ones. Data-centric means that data is a companys primary resource.

To become data-centric, enterprises need a platform that gets them a complete overview of the data, collected from all of the applications they are using. They need a birds-eye view on their data to make it easier to access, combine and analyze, leading to quick insights. To be able to automate this, an integration platform needs to be capable of handling complex use cases, performing deep integrations and providing flexibility.

ZigiOps allows advanced filtering and mapping and fits even the most complex scenarios. A flexible and powerful platform like ZigiOps can enable your enterprise to become data-centric.

No-code and low-code  citizen developers on the rise

Decisions about which software tools to be used in an organization traditionally were left to the IT teams and system administrators. However, recently all types of non-technical employees are choosing and investing in technology.

Sales, marketing and business development teams are striving to automate and work smarter. Software is being massively democratized among teams and departments and employees are becoming more technically literate.

Gartner calls this process shadow IT, and according to them it seems to be spreading quite rapidly across organizations. This might be a problem in terms of security, collaboration and operations. However, the solution is not in limiting the process, but rather in finding tools that enable non-technical teams to comply with ITs requirements and at the same time automate workflows and analytics.

This is solved by no-code or low-code tools. Specifically with no-code tools everyone is able to integrate and automate, even if they have no technical background. ZigiOps is a perfect example for a no-code integration platform, which allows anyone to set up integrations within minutes, even if they have complex needs and specific use cases.

Summary

The world of integrations is developing rapidly, as it is obvious that integrations are more necessary than ever. With the number of applications used by businesses growing at 30% per year (and even that percentage is increasing), they are simply not able to catch up with all the data collected, if they dont integrate. They need to integrate faster, smarter and easier.

Integrations are becoming code-less, going to the cloud, getting closer with analytics and data, and at the same time staying hybrid.

The future of integrations is to be more and more complex on the inside, as they need to keep pace with all the emerging apps, technologies and data requirements, and more and more simple on the outside, as everyone wants to be able to integrate.

ZigiOps is a modern integration platform, which allows complex integrations, data mappings and filterings, while staying simple and easy to work with. It seamlessly connects applications no matter if they are in the cloud or on-premise.