You've likely heard of Software as a Service (SaaS). A SaaS company sells software to users as a subscription. When you subscribe, the company offers technical support, customer service, and upgrades to help you make the most of their software.
Organizations rarely use just one software solution to meet all their needs. Instead, they mix and match plugins, software, and even widgets to create an IT landscape that supports and grows their business.
From a business standpoint, adding more tools to your existing software can be costly. Software vendors struggle to meet all customer needs because of increasing demands.
Most software companies use their own systems to collect data from the cloud and on-site systems. They use this data to complete their own stack. Ascend2 found that 57% of marketers recognize integrating disparate technologies as the biggest barrier to success.
What happens when different systems operate on separate platforms, each playing a crucial role in your business? You risk data loss, disjointed information, and misalignment.
With growing consumer expectations and complex internal systems, we need a way to create a smoother IT experience. This is where iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service) comes in.
iPaaS is an integration platform that connects otherwise disjointed systems to deliver a unified solution to customers. It acts as a conduit for communication between multiple systems, allowing for integration and seamless data sharing.
iPaaS offers unlimited potential for organizations. It becomes essential for businesses as they rely more on the cloud.
Most companies run on various systems, especially within their sales, marketing, and service departments. iPaaS improves data silos and communication between departments by connecting software and systems, making it easier to share data internally and externally.
"Frends allows us to focus on our core activities and new product development. Our financial administration team, for example, is delighted as they no longer need to carry out manual searches and can focus on getting the real work done instead." - Sami Halinen, CIO, Raisio Group
iPaaS also allows companies to expand their offerings without needing to build more services or further develop existing systems. Instead, they can integrate with other software that already provides those services, offering a unified, stronger solution to customers.
Imagine being a hairdresser with a website that helps stylists schedule appointments and remind clients of their bookings. After using this platform, you realize stylists want their clients to leave reviews and make payments through the website.
You can meet these needs in two ways. One way is to build and add features to your platform. Another way is to use iPaaS to connect it to existing review and payment software. The latter saves time and money while expanding your service offering and giving your clients what they want.
Companies use iPaaS platforms to create connections and deploy software applications in cloud services and on-premise environments.
The company sets parameters for the types of connections allowed on the platform. These parameters could be in the form of an application programming interface (API), pre-built connectors, or other rules. At Frends, we use a low-code connector approach.
After setting up these rules, iPaaS creates a central system to view, manage, and modify all data, infrastructure, and operations. This allows companies to easily modify their products, share data, and provide solutions to their market.
Frends is an eiPaaS (Enterprise Integration Platform as a Service), which differs from regular iPaaS in its use scenarios. Many organizations use an eiPaaS solution for cloud service integration (CSI), application-to-application integration (A2A), business-to-business integration (B2B), mobile application integration (MAI), and IoT integration scenarios.
This is achieved by developing, deploying, executing, managing, and monitoring integration processes that connect multiple endpoints in various deployment models so they can work together.
Unlike standard iPaaS solutions, eiPaaS solutions support enterprise-class integration projects that require:
Frends' enterprise iPaaS also enables a Digital Integration Hub approach, which allows for legacy modernization, 24/7 APIs from legacy systems and system-of-records, and microservice-like scalability for iPaaS-based APIs. Digital Integration Hub (DIH) and Hyperautomation are features of enterprise-level iPaaS.
Hyperautomation combines Business Process Automation (BPA), Robotic Process Automation (RPA), and Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Frends enterprise iPaaS serves as both an API platform and a BPA platform. It includes capabilities to run RPA tools within its process orchestrations and change process execution based on AI-made decisions.
For example, a loan request (API) might trigger a Frends iPaaS process that queries the CRM to check if the person is eligible for a loan. The process continues with an AI-based decision, determining the loan size if the requested amount is too risky for the bank.
This same process also activates RPA recordings to integrate with older legacy systems that lack proper interfaces. This combination of BPA, RPA, and AI is known as Hyperautomation or Intelligent Process Automation.
"Thanks to the flexible architecture of Frends, we are now able to build integrations whenever necessary, which has been significant as efficient integrations not only save money, but also increase transparency and error handling." Heidi Evilampi, Head of Business Process Development, Oras
A Digital Integration Hub (DIH) serves as the backbone of your digital transformation, centralizing business functions and data for all digital initiatives. DIH connects to legacy line-of-business systems using various connectors, whether application-specific adapters or general technology.
A Digital Integration Hub consolidates and merges this data, making it accessible for digital use cases via APIs. However, legacy systems can struggle with the high volume and frequency of requests generated by this kind of miniservice.
The answer is simple - let's put an intermediate superfast data storage in between. Business data from legacy systems is pulled and prepared into an extremely fast and scalable storage. The Digital Integration Hub and API published from it then use this storage to read and write business data, protecting legacy systems from excessive load. When Frends enterprise iPaaS (eIPaaS) functions as a Digital Integration Hub, it can scale APIs using containerization to handle heavy workloads efficiently.
A Digital Integration Hub (DIH) requires several key features: the ability to connect to all systems, host, publish, and scale APIs, utilize superfast intermediate data storage, and scale without limits. All these capabilities are built-in in the Frends iPaaS.
Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an older development pattern where business functions are implemented using platforms like iPaaS. These functions are now developed as independently scalable services, evolving from SOA to microservices.
Frends can be described as a SOA Platform, Microservices Platform, API Platform, Digital Integration Hub, or Hyperautomation Platform. It is a versatile integration platform that adapts to various architectural approaches.
Frends is designed with API development and developers in mind. As an integration API developer, you benefit from the easy BPMN 2.0 language, the option to incorporate C# code snippets into visual processes, automated versioning and testing, click-and-play deployment, and many other developer-friendly features. Our online documentation includes comprehensive API tutorials and other integration-related how-to articles.
Frends supports over 200 ready-made connectors to line-of-business systems like SAP, as well as all standard protocols such as OpenAPI and OAuth. It can also create processes from OpenAPI/Swagger files, enhancing its flexibility and ease of use.
Frends enterprise iPaaS (eiPaaS) stands out with features and functionalities unmatched by other iPaaS or integration solutions. It uses the BPMN 2.0 standard notation for low-code integration and orchestration and is suitable for both quick API calls and long processes, such as an order-to-invoice process.
Frends eipaas uniquely joins low-code process automation to RPA and AI to enable automated processes to make decisions that humans were previously required to make. When combined with API-capabilities of frends - the result is a pervasive platform for all of your API, RPA, integration and API-management requirements.
"With Frends we can take care of all our API management requirements. We selected Frends as our long-term API management solution and so far, it has proven flexible, reliable and cost-efficient." - Linda Pihl, Head of Digital, St1 Nordic
Frends can handle heavy-duty API hosting thanks to its hybrid architecture, which supports containerization. Often, slow back-end systems cannot keep up with the load that a scalable integration platform can generate. An in-memory data storage solution between the fast Frends APIs and the slower back-end systems resolves this issue, allowing your legacy systems to underpin digitalization efforts. Creating facade APIs with caching is a concept known as the Digital Integration Hub by Gartner.
Frends is available as an iPaaS in Azure, but its distributed deployment architecture allows execution in any cloud or on-premises environment while still being developed and monitored through a single user interface: the Frends iPaaS Control Panel.
Frends iPaaS is versatile and adaptable, designed to meet the unique integration needs of various industries. By providing secure, real-time data integration and automation, Frends enhances operational efficiency, regulatory compliance, and customer experience across sectors.
Whether it’s streamlining supply chains in retail and e-commerce, enhancing customer data management in finance, or modernizing legacy systems in the public sector, Frends offers tailored solutions that drive innovation and optimize business processes.
In summary, Frends iPaaS is an easy and fast integration platform that connects various systems to deliver a unified solution, enhancing communication and data sharing within and outside the organization. As businesses rely more on cloud services, iPaaS becomes crucial to nearly every business model.
Frends' eiPaaS goes beyond by supporting enterprise-class integration projects and enabling features like the Digital Integration Hub and Hyperautomation. With iPaaS, businesses can expand their offerings efficiently, reduce costs, and provide a seamless experience for their clients.