The triple S of integrations – Scalable, Stable and Secure – how to achieve it?

The place of integrations in todays landscape

It may sound unbelievable, but integrations have been around for more than 40 years, now. There have been different integration approaches, like migration, ETL, standard data synchronization, BPM, enterprise service bus, and recently serverless event-driven architecture. In the past integrations were considered a technical task. Today they are a strategic task that involves not just the technical part, but also operations and management processes.

The need for integrations rises with adopting different software solutions. Successful enterprises today rely heavily on numerous applications. The more systems they use, the more disparate technologies they are built on, and the more different vendors they have. Enterprises often need their applications to work together, and this is not always an easy task.

In recent years system integrations became a key factor for corporations, bringing strategic and competitive advantages, as well as improved operations and processes.

How to approach integrations

Having in mind the huge amounts of applications that todays organizations use, there are even higher numbers of different integration use cases. All of them have various requirements, but there are three things that are mandatory, no matter the use case.

These are Scalability, Stability and Security. You integration needs to be able to change and adapt while you grow and develop. You need to have piece of mind that the integration wont fail with any error or system downtime. And of course, it needs to follow the highest security standards.

So when choosing an integration approach, keep these three things in mind Scalability, Stability and Security. Of course, while considering integration methods, the specifics of your use case are also very important.

Lets have a look at the main approaches, used by companies today:

• Develop an integration internally many companies consider developing the needed integration internally, as this guarantees it will match their exact requirements. However, this often takes more time and resources than expected. Supporting, maintaining, and updating the integration might even require a dedicated team.

• Outsource it some companies hire a service provider to develop the integration for them. This helps them get the exact requirements they have, while saving time, but it might be quite costly. Another possible problem is that leaving such task to an external partner might bring some unexpected misunderstandings and delays.

• Use an integration tool there are various integration tools on the market, and enterprises have a good choice of integration platforms to use. However, they need to carefully consider the quality/price/stability/security ratio of the tool. Integration tools themselves might require some coding and scripting to meet the exact needs of the company. This again takes resources and a dedicated expert. No-code integration tools, on the other hand, in most cases can only do simple integrations and are not capable of completing more complex use cases.

Lets have a look at the most important elements of an integration, and how to choose the best approach for your needs.

What to look for in an integration

As we mentioned above, integration use cases are so heterogeneous that they outnumber the software applications themselves. This is why it is important to describe and plan all details in advance to make sure your integration will work properly.

However, there are a few common things that we need to look for in integrations Scalability, Stability and Security. Lets look at them in more details:

• Scalability

In todays software world everything is changing so fast that sometimes it gets difficult to keep pace with the changes. Every couple of days there is a new version of something. This often affects your whole settings and environment.

At the same time the company needs changes, the goals might get updated, the teams grow, etc.

This is why, it is really important to have scalable integrations, that will grow with you and keep up with the newest versions of the systems they are connecting.

If you are looking for a tool to integrate your systems, make sure it will be able to scale with you, and will support the latest versions of your software. Also check if there are limitations on the number of transfers, transactions or users. Many platforms put limitations that might be a showstopper.

If you are developing your own integration, be ready to dedicate a team that will be able to upgrade and update whenever needed.

• Stability

The next essential thing in an integration is stability. What would happen if there was a system downtime? And what if an error occurs? Are there any backups or recovery methods?

You need to ask these questions, before choosing an integration tool. And if you are developing an internal integration take care of backups and high availability.

An ideal integration tool does not require any installations or changes to your systems, like some plugins do. It will provide high availability and will handle system downtimes with ease. Also, make sure support is included and available whenever you need it. Check if the team will help you with your initial integration setup, and if they guarantee everything will work as expected.

Stability is not only the systems uptime and backups, but also the proper setup of your use case. You need to make sure all the data is mapped correctly in your integration and all the systems requirements are met. In case there are flaws in the integration setup, different problems might occur. The transfer of some fields might fail, and in some cases whole records might get denied. This is why, it would be best to get professional help with your initial setup, and its ideal if there is support included for that.

• Security

Security is a big topic nowadays and integrations are no exception. Do you follow the best security practices with your integrations?

If you are considering an integration tool does it store your data and how? Is it ISO 27001 certified? Is the integration configuration data encrypted? Does it regularly go through vulnerability and penetration testing?

All these questions are important before choosing the best tool for your needs. Its unnecessary to say that you should choose a tool that follows the best security practices.

In case you are developing your own tool do not underestimate security. Make sure you are following the highest standards and perform regular tests.

• Use cases

Here are a few examples to illustrate the above.

Transferring Jira tasks to BMC Remedy incidents

Remedy has required fields that do not exist in Jira, like First name and Last name of the user. To create an incident in BMC Remedy, we need to have some values in these fields, but they are not present in Jira at all. We can map everything else normally (like Summary, Description, etc.) so everything that we want is being transferred, and we cover the required fields that Jira does not have through the mapping in ZigiOps by hard coding them. This way we provide all necessary data so that we can cover the data transfer successfully. If this is missing, Remedy would deny the transfer and it would fail.

Transferring ServiceNow incidents to Jira tasks

For example, we want to send status name to Jira. ServiceNow represents the status values as numbers, and the status In Progress in ServiceNow shows as 2. If we go to Jira, there the statuses are only To Do, In Progress and Done. These statuses do not match with what we have by default in ServiceNow. The status names differ in the two systems.

In this case we can set the following conditions through the ZigiOps mapping:

• We want to send to Jira status In Progress, but there is a condition. The condition is that the {state} value in ServiceNow needs to be 2. When we do this if ZigiOps collects state value 2, we will change it to In Progress and then send it as a status name to Jira.

• When {state} is 1, this equals to New in ServiceNow, that is the equivalent of To Do in Jira.

• When {state} is 6 (in ServiceNow this equals to Resolved) in Jira this is usually Done.

All these things need to be planned at the time of forming the integration use case. If we, for example, leave it with simple mapping and match the status with the {state} in ServiceNow, it will send value 2. Jira will say: There is no such status and will ignore it.

Transferring Cherwell incidents to Jira tasks

In Cherwell, instead of one field for Priority, there are 2 fields Impact and Urgency. There is also Priority, that is defined automatically, based on Impact and Urgency. Jira, on the other hand, has only Priority.

With ZigiOps, based on these 2 values (Impact and Urgency) we can generate different priorities in Jira.

We can do two AND conditions: The Priority in Jira will be with value Highest, when:

Impact in Cherwell is Production AND

Urgency in Cherwell is Critical

Then we can add: The Priority in Jira will be with value High, when:

Impact in Cherwell is Production AND

Urgency in Cherwell is Medium

Then: The Priority in Jira will be with value Low, when:

Impact in Cherwell is Test AND

Urgency in Cherwell is Critical

And so on, we can add as many conditions as we want, to match our requirements.

This is how we can take the two values Impact and Urgency and change the value in Jira, based on different combinations of them.

Jira does not have such fields, like Impact and Urgency, but the users in Cherwell, cannot directly change the Priority. They need to change the Impact and Urgency fields. This is why in ZigiOps we need to combine the 2 fields from Cherwell and send the correct values to Jira, through conditions.

How ZigiOps solves integration challenges

There are lots of challenges when you need an integration and the task of choosing the most appropriate tool should not be taken lightly.

ZigiOps is a tool that matches all the requirements for scalability, stability and security, that we listed above, and at the same time is completely no-code and quite easy to use. Lets see how ZigiOps can help you solve your integration challenges.

• Scalability:

• With ZigiOps you have no limitations, and you can transfer as many queries as you need between your source and target systems.

• You can create new integrations in minutes and whenever you need updates, you can change the existing ones easily.

• ZigiOps supports the latest versions of all the systems it integrates, as soon as they are launched.

• Stability:

• ZigiOps is a standalone integration platform which connects with systems via APIs. You do not need to install or change anything within your systems to connect them.

• ZigiOps guarantees 99.9% uptime for 365 days of the year.

• The platform can handle scenarios where one of your systems goes down. It will fill in the missing information once your instance is back up.

• ZigiOps provides high availability to ensure that integrations continue their operation in the event of a server failure or maintenance. This is done using a Primary ZigiOps server and at least one backup server.

• Security:

• ZigiOps was built by following security best practices.

• The on-premises version of the integration tool doesnt have a database and therefore cannot store any information.

• The company is ISO 27001 certified.

• ZigiOps encrypts the integration configuration data in full compliance with the FIPS 140-2.

• ZigiOps uses secure protocols for communication with third-party systems.

• The ZigiWave teams regularly make design and code reviews, as well as unit and integration testing.

• ZigiOps undergoes regular vulnerability assessments, accompanied with penetration tests, conducted by third-party companies.

As an addition to the three main requirements for an integration above, ZigiOps provides advanced field mapping and filtering capabilities, dynamically loads the schema of the integrated systems, and makes it very easy to setup even the most complex integration scenarios.

The ZigiOps support team is always ready to help, and support is fully included. We also help you with the initial setup of your integration and make sure that everything will work properly and as expected.

Conclusion

System integration is already an integral part of companies environments. Besides transferring data between systems, integrations serve strategic and operational purposes, that involve increasing value to the customer, while at the same time providing lots of benefits for the company, as well (e.g., reducing operational costs and improving response time).

Integrations are essential, but there are many risks and challenges that need to be avoided. The best way to avoid them is to carefully create and plan your use case and then choose the best integration tool for your specific needs. A tool that provides scalability, stability and security of your integrations and can match your use case.

ZigiOps is a tool that fulfills all the major requirements for a scalable, stable and secure integration. No matter how complex your use case is, ZigiOps can help you resolve it. To test it and see how it works live, book a technical demo with our team now.