Trends in Integration Technologies

We are living in a connected world, so it is important to understand what the future looks like for the integration domain. The trends we will see in coming years are:

• API-first Approach

We have seen exponential growth in API-led integrations since 2020, and this approach will continue to grow in upcoming years. The API-led approach has helped organisations to support business agility as well as maximise re-use of business functions. In addition, with more and more APIs being developed, there will be a focus on enhancing API management tools for API developers and API consumers. With this approach, we see that most middleware platforms no longer call them Enterprise Service Bus (ESB).

• Hybrid Model

Overall, organisations are shifting towards hybrid and multi-cloud models for their business applications. The universal integration approach to managing such a diverse set of environments will be needed in the future.

• Embedded Integration Layer

Many organisations are on packaged or SaaS products, and these products will continue to enhance their integration capabilities to uncover core business and connect to the outside world. Some examples are SAP, Salesforce, Workday, or Maximo.

• Domain Centric Decentralization

In the future, we will see decentralised integrations due to more and more adoption of domain-driven and micro-services-driven architectures. Instead of a centralised monolithic integration platform, each domain will have different integration approaches and even tools, based on the volume, velocity, and variety of data being integrated. And these domain-specific integration solutions will be governed by respective business units, rather than a centralised integration team who knows little about business data.

This trend is also making organisations think about server-less integrations instead of using traditional integration platforms to achieve agility and scale.

• Smart Automation

Integration platforms are now focusing more on approaches to achieve automation in building integrations and business processes through AI&ML on their platforms. This reduces reliance on integration developers as well as overall time to market. Platform vendors are working on auto-mapping, mapping suggestions, auto-flow completion, etc. through data insights using AI&ML. This will not only minimise human intervention but will also enhance the accuracy and speed of the data integrations.

• Autonomous Learning

ML supported data integration platforms can induce autonomous learning to provide insights on patterns and trends in data being integrated, which can help businesses to monitor business behaviour and so the decision making.

In addition, there are new entrants like Data-as-a-Product, Data Mesh, Data Fabric, Knowledge Graphs, etc. that accelerate real-time analytics and insights, especially when dealing with big data, and can change the overall approach to integrations.

Now, the bigger question is which approach or toolset is suitable for my enterprise. We live in a noisy and complicated world, so the answer is — it depends!. It depends on the applications being connected, the style of integration, size of data, interface contract, mapping complexity, non-functional requirements, and many other parameters.

I would appreciate your comments on the trends that I see, and please also share the trends that you see in Integration Technologies.