How to handle business integration challenges with enterprise iPaaS

Transform. Modernize. Innovate.

This is the call every enterprise must follow to thrive in these challenging times. In order to drive your digital transformation in the face of a competitive market, your business needs to deliver innovative new products and services, boost your customer experience and match the pace of a rapidly changing global marketplace.

It doesn’t matter if you’re in banking and financial services, manufacturing, retail or transportation and logistics. And it doesn’t make a difference if your customers are other businesses, consumers, or both.

To become competitive today—and stay competitive in the future—businesses like yours are turning to an integration-platform-as-a-service (iPaaS), and a hybrid integration approach as the core to their digital transformations. This push is so important that 65 percent of global enterprises will have completed a hybrid integration project in 2022, and the momentum is only picking up.

But not every iPaaS can handle the hard stuff

Integrating two internal services or applications basically designed to work together is easy. Any integration startup with a short list of connectors, a capable marketing team and edgy branding is going to be able to handle the easy stuff.

But that’s not what you need.

You need an enterprise integration platform as-a-service (iPaaS) that does true enterprise-class scaling without breaking a sweat—because it was designed from the start with the most complex integration challenges in mind.

You need an enterprise iPaaS that makes it easy to connect your data no matter where it lives, from SaaS, legacy and mainframe, to custom apps, and any cloud on the market today (or coming tomorrow).

You need to have the ability to let your developers dig deep to build integrations on power-mode—and empower your business leaders and non-IT staff to build and maintain integrations intuitively, without knowing any code or needing to open any tickets.

You need to be able to create integration services, but also handle B2B, APIs, microservices and more. So that you can work with any app, any data, any device, and any partner to simplify digital transformation, innovate faster, and modernize for agility.

If an iPaaS can’t do hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure, unlock agile DevOps and continuous delivery and bolster a platform-enabled ecosystem—it can’t handle the hard stuff. That means you may wake up one morning stuck in a contract and having invested time on a platform that you’ll have to replace once you hit that dead end.

Digital transformation is the key to your success—so make sure you can do the hard stuff. But don’t make it harder than it has to be.

webMethods.io does both

webMethods.io is the only all-in-one, enterprise-class, more-than-just-an-integration platform that does all the hard stuff, all the easy stuff, and everything in between. That means keeping your stable legacy systems and modernizing or creating new ones for competitive advantage. And building mobile and cloud apps on demand. And exposing existing data and applications with APIs to create modern interfaces.

So when you need your developers to build something nobody has ever tried to build before, and you also need to let anyone integrate anything quickly and robustly, webMethods.io is the right tool for the job. And Software AG is the right partner with the right history to help you pull it off.

webMethods handles the hard stuff, like:

• Improving automation of core, complex, hybrid workflows to meet customer and partner expectations and timelines
• Meeting SLAs and saving money by boosting global supply chain agility and flexibility
• Leveraging existing investments, including legacy, with a “leave and layer” approach
• Enabling ad hoc integrators via recipes, and integration specialists via custom development
• Achieving true multi-cloud compatibility, across all public and private clouds

Importantly, it also handles the easier stuff better than anyone else, including:

• Connecting all your data, and integrating everything and anything you can imagine
• Boosting efficiency through business automation to reduce costs and eliminate errors·
• Making it easy to migrate to the cloud, scale rapidly, and try new fast-fail ideas

Continue reading and we’ll show you how webmethods.io does these things better than any other hybrid integration—and B2B, and API, and microservices—platform on the market.

The following 5 challenges are likely to be faced by any business working towards a successful digital transformation. You’ll probably recognize that some are immediate issues for your organization, and others may look like issues you’re not facing—yet. But all are critical pieces of the puzzle that your business will have to master in order to transform, modernize and innovate with the best.

Plan for the inevitable today. And don’t fall into the trap of buying an enterprise iPaaS that looks good in theory, but ultimately fails to deliver everything your enterprise needs today, tomorrow, and into the future.

1. The multi-function iPaaS challenge:

You need to automate core, complex, hybrid workflows to meet customer and partner expectations and timelines.

How you’ll handle it:

Nobody has more integration connectors than webMethods.io, with 550+ to connect to SAP, mainframes, Snowflake for data integration, trading partners (B2B), and custom apps. The huge advantage to all these connectors isn’t that you need them all at once—it’s that you need the ones you need right now, without making any compromises. So whether that’s 3, 5, or 50 connectors, you’ll get them all in one place. And you’ll have the rest no matter how your needs change in the future.

Since webMethods.io connects all your data, apps, devices, and partners—and integrates them easily—it lets you unlock powerful data analytics from cloud data platforms as well as nearly any other source. And that’s an automation boon.

This is important because you may think your organization only needs to automate simple SaaS app workflows in the cloud. But chances are what you thought was simple ends up requiring integration between on-premises legacy systems of record, API management to create new channels of revenue or customer-facing services, and more, as market, technology and consumer surprises come around the corner. At different points, you’ll probably also need to involve IT and non-technical business users alike.

webMethods.io is a truly multi-function enterprise iPaaS, so that from simple integrations, to the most complex you can imagine, it will let you automate the core, not-so-easy-for-everyone-else, hybrid workflows between on-premises and everywhere else. And that will keep your ever more demanding customers, and critical partners, happy, in-sync and on your side.

2. The fragmented supply chain challenge:

You need to improve your agility to match a global supply chain that has grown fragmented and unpredictable.

How you’ll handle it:

webMethods.io provides supply chain visibility so that you can track products across systems, identify poor performers, control costs, and improve customer service. You’ll do this by harnessing multiple parts of our enterprise iPaaS solution:

• B2B will help you automate partner transactions to reduce supply chain errors and time needed to manage supplier orders·
• Integration will help you with SaaS so that your systems of record don’t splinter, and you can maintain a clear understanding of your customers and their supply chains·
• APIs will help you bridge internal and external at light weight so that you can move with the supply chain instead of against it

Manage inventory in motion. Generate proactive status reports. Improve supply chain visibility. And limit supply chain disruptions. While everyone else is still grasping at straws.

3. The “rip and replace” silo challenge:

You need to tear down silos across your systems of record, and you’re worried about the potential IT, data migration, and user training costs of “rip and replace.”

How you’ll handle it:

The alternative to blindly “ripping and replacing” is to go gradual with “leave and layer.” webMethods.io will help you access previously siloed systems of record to accelerate your digital transformation and make use of modern technologies and cutting-edge architectural concepts.

You’ll do this by leveraging existing investments, like historical data and robust legacy systems that still do some things better than anything else that’s been invented since. But with webMethods.io hybrid integration, you will also get to use powerful APIs and microservices to enable development of modern mobile apps, better UI/UX, and new lines of revenue without the risks and costs of ripping and replacing.

This gives you the best of both worlds, and lets your organization support incremental and strategic digital transformations so that you can modernize at the right pace, and drive innovation without breaking your core business advantages. Say hello to the option of moving to a subscription-based model, empowering your business users to “self-serve,” and everything else you can imagine. Smoothly, reliably, and with a strategic roadmap so that your business can avoid any bumps in the road the market may encounter.

4. The IT quicksand challenge:

You need a way to avoid IT resource overload, since your current systems require integration specialists, and make it too difficult for citizen and “ad hoc” integrators to contribute.

How you’ll handle it:

webMethods.io enables ad hoc integrators alongside your developers and integration specialists, who can build high-performing, advanced services in Java and FLOW logic. Your business users, applications teams, and SaaS superusers will be able to create automated workflows using advanced services and prebuilt connectors in a drag & drop interface. No or low code? No problem.

You’ll have visual dashboards, and powerful AI and machine learning features in place to comfortably and intuitively suggest common actions—built-in and ready to go with our easy workflow UI for less technical users. That means a world of possibility to reduce the load on IT, with:

• the ability to turn services into APIs with the click of a button,
• visual orchestration and data mapping,·
• and multi-user, single-platform, all-levels-of-IT knowledge collaboration.

5. The multi-cloud challenge:

You need to be multi-cloud, because you’re being forced to adopt tools and implement them on AWS, Azure, and more, but your current integration platform only works with one cloud.

How you’ll handle it:

webMethods simply doesn’t have this limitation. It works with nearly every cloud that exists, whether public or private. It lets you do enterprise-class, multi-cloud orchestrations, and is vendor agnostic by design. You can even build and run your smart data pipelines for data integration across hybrid and multi-cloud architectures. This gives you a huge advantage since you can use the cloud providers of your own choice—the ones that best match your organization’s needs and goals. And if those ever change, you won’t be held back.

Having the wide-open option of working with a large ecosystem of customers and partners is always better than getting shoe-horned into a corner and being forced to throw good money after bad in order to escape.

The key to webMethods.io is that it handles the hard stuff—when that’s what you need, and there’s no way around it. But we didn’t ignore the easy stuff either.

The promise of our hybrid integration platform is that it’s the best tool for all your daily needs. And when you need something out of the ordinary, it’ll do that too.

Here are three basic challenges most business leaders face on a daily basis:

The SaaS complexity challenge:

You keep adding SaaS apps, APIs, and services to solve short-term business problems, leading to growing complexity and ever deepening architectural debt.

How you’ll handle it:

webMethods.io at its most fundamental level will help you connect all your data and integrate everything easily. It provides business visibility with a single view of sales, customer, and product data across all systems, all apps, and all data sources.

On premises. In the cloud. Everywhere.

And that’s how you’ll drive strategic and operational responsiveness, probably before your first coffee break.

The go-to-cloud slowdown challenge:

You are being pushed to move to the cloud in order to save money and resources—but the difficulty of re-implementing apps, data migration, and training is slowing your organization to a crawl.

How you’ll handle it:

With webMethods.io it won’t matter that you’re trying to juggle highly distributed systems, partners, and suppliers in the cloud. You’ll be able to make operations more efficient by automating business everywhere.

You’ll reduce costs and eliminate errors with top-notch troubleshooting and error handling capabilities—powerful, basic, industry-leading features we’ve built into the core of webMethods.io.

The scaling without replacing challenge:

You need to implement an architecture that responds to the demands of the cloud, and will scale without having to replace your systems of record.

How you’ll handle it:

webMethods makes it easier to migrate to the cloud for data access—so you can scale as fast as possible, proactively, to take advantage of rapidly changing market opportunities. You’ll be able to test new, fast-fail ideas and identify at lightning speed which ones are working and should get an immediate push across your enterprise.

While your competition is trying to catch a falling knife chasing trends too late in the cycle, your business will already be strapped in to ride the rocket upwards. Over, and over, and over again.

Then get in touch to see how webMethods.io does it. And let us show you how Software AG’s award-winning professional services will help you transform, modernize, and innovate without the fear of failure.

You’ll make the hard stuff easy for your organization, so that you can create new models of revenue, and excite your customers and users with intuitive interfaces and revolutionary user experiences. All while saving costs, streamlining and automating your business, and readying your organization to take advantage of all the latest technologies and ideas.

Unlocking the promises of the cloud, while maintaining the advantages of your historical systems of record, has the power to transform your organization, but only if your enterprise iPaaS is truly capable of it. Our technical expertise, experience with what works best for each context and industry, and advanced support for hybrid integration, B2B, APIs, microservices, and beyond makes us a partner you can trust with your success.