Although the term Integration Platform as a Service was invited in 2011, the first such services didn’t surface in the Ivanti Neurons for ITSM/ITAM world until about 5 years ago with Zapier, a company that provides integrations for web applications.
At that time API was, and to a degree still is, very difficult and time-consuming to implement and maintain, so Zapier was touted as a great solution and possibly the future of integrations. However, a lack of features (at least in the Ivanti universe) as well as cost were the main factors for its fizzling out.
I have to say that I was really impressed by the Workato integration that Ivanti demonstrated on a recent show-and-tell webinar. It was quite possibly one of the best presentations by Ivanti I had come across. Particularly impressive was the presentation by Peter Adams, the Sr. Director of Product Management who joined in October of 2023 from BMC with a long track record.
In any event, Workato, an iPaaS provider, appears to be heading in the right direction. It’s no secret that I dislike APIs due to their ever-changing nature requiring constant maintenance, a developer (or two) to create, and maintain. In the same timeframe, flat files and XML can be used to get the job done many times over. There is even an argument to say that a flat-file integration is the precursor to an API integration, after all, you need to document the types of data being exchanged. Where API however trumps flat files is the instant integration, but then again you can schedule flat files to be created within seconds which will satisfy requirements more than 80% of the time. Security plays another role in making API more challenging to work with, so in the 20% remaining where an argument can be made for API, this too has to be weighed out carefully. Sometimes simpler is better. Less is more. Long term, until a better solution arrives. And that solution might just be Workato, or perhaps other iPaaS tools.
When it comes to cost, it’s not unlike hiring a consultant, sure the cost is high upfront but in the long term the ROI and cost savings, increased performance, and staff morale are quite noticeable.
You really need to evaluate what business you are in. Are you in the business of creating APIs or does it make sense to use iPaaS provider’s services to build integrations quickly and easily without the overhead and need to maintain the back end?
I’m really looking forward to seeing what’s ahead.
ITSM/ITAM/ESM Blog 