Software integration has become ever more important to companies as they interact with their clients, employees, and partners across multiple channels and touchpoints. An integration platform as a service (iPaaS) has made this software integration more efficient. However, as the number and complexity of available iPaaS solutions increases, companies have to consider several factors before choosing the right vendor for them.

To start your evaluation process, you need to first understand your requirements before you can begin to compare between different iPaaS solutions and evaluate which is best for what goal you want to achieve.

4 Steps to Define Your Organization’s iPaaS Requirements

Here are some of the steps that can help you best understand what challenges the iPaaS will solve for your company.

1. Map your application portfolio

You need to consider which applications you are using currently, and where they are based. For example, are they on-premises or in the cloud? Is the mix of applications likely to change? Do you plan to migrate from on-premises systems to the cloud?

2. Decide what you need to integrate

Next, determine which applications need to be connected. Also, decide what data they will share and which one of them keeps the master data for each type of shared data.

3. Create a strategy for privacy and data security

The third step is to decide what security and privacy protocols you need to build into integrations before you build the integration architectures.

4. Define technical specifications

You need to know the exact technical specifications that will fulfill your needs. Consider asking these questions:

·   How much data will you synchronize, and how often? Is it going to be online or batch process?

·   How will you test the integrations?

·   What are the exact integration flows that you will build?

·   Where do they start and end?

·   How will you log data? How will you handle exceptions?

Questions to ask the iPaaS provider

Once you have a better understanding of what you expect from an iPaaS solution, you can go ahead with comparing the different products out there. We prepared a list of the essential questions that will help you evaluate what each product offers, from functionality to service:

• Do they provide local and on-prem support? 

• Who will handle updates and maintenance?

• Do they have support in my native language?

• Is support offered for on-prem to cloud integration for a hybrid solution?

• Will I be limited by the number of transactions?
  (You want a platform that offers unlimited database connectors with no additional surprise fees).
  
• Is the platform easy to use? (You want a Drag and Drop platform)
  
• If my company develops its own customized system, can the iPaaS platform offer customized connectors for my proprietary system?

• Does the platform offer a scalable solution for my organization’s future needs?
  
• What security protocols are built into the architecture? Can others be implemented?
  
• Are tools for building, testing, implementing, and managing integration flows a part of the service? Or, will you be dependent on a 3^rd party integrator?
  
• Is there a dashboard to track resource use? If yes, how accessible is it?
  
• Does the platform allow users to assign standard identifiers to aid the de-duplication of records?
  
• What connectors does it support? What is the product roadmap?
  
• Will the connectors support integration with IoT, B2B integration, and API management?
  
• How extensive are the platform’s data mapping and data transformation capabilities?
  
• Is the platform capable of one to multiple integrations or is it a limited point to point? Do you require multiple integrations to the same application?
  
• Can multiple connection protocols and data delivery be implemented to operate simultaneously?

Understand iPaaS pricing

Before you jump on to invest in an iPaaS solution, it’s important to know how iPaaS pricing works. Typically, you’re offered an iPaaS subscription service, with pricing tiers based on your variables, such as the number of connections, the volume of data, the volume of processing power, or the number of events.

While multi-tenancy reduces subscriptions expenses, the costs of enterprise iPaaS can run from tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. You’ll see that many lightweight iPaaS vendors provide limited functionality for free. However, these lightweight tools are not a viable option for managing complex enterprise-level integrations.

Many businesses prefer the subscription model to keep costs affordable and predictable. The provider may also bundle other costs into an iPaaS subscription. There may be a developer’s fee for building and deploying integrations, as well as fees for priority support, hypercare and training. Some vendors eschew the add-on pricing model in favor of all-in-one costs, which may be suitable for large enterprises.

Conclusion

When it comes to application integration, iConduct’s iPaaS gives you all the tools and abilities to be independent. It unifies all entities and attributes of your business applications into a single, web-based dashboard that can operate as a cloud service, on-premise, or hybrid solution.

The platform supports all enterprise, legacy, and cloud-based business applications, and eliminates coding on both the source and target application. With a secured agent, full in-memory data handling, and active transaction monitoring, our iPaaS solution provides the best performance, ultimate security, and the confidence that all applications are communicating seamlessly and flawlessly.

Get a demo to learn how iConduct’s iPaaS can facilitate your software integration.