What are the Best iPaaS for Enterprises?

As the business world and its technologies become more complex and interconnected, enterprises are often at the forefront of what technology can enable—and what headaches it can cause. This is particularly true when it comes to integrating the myriad applications in use at any time (on average, 464 applications) and making the most of the data available to your organization.

Fortunately, Integration Platforms as a Service (iPaaS) have grown to address the needs of enterprises, leading to a new segment of Enterprise-tier iPaaS products (EiPaaS).

What is EiPaaS?

Not all EiPaaS feature lists are identical, but there are some strong trends that distinguish these products from SMB-level products. While smaller-scale vendors focus on prebuilt integrations between various applications and services, enterprise iPaaS allow for more customizable integrations between data formats and protocols. The depth of the integration grants users more agency and autonomy to integrate nonstandard programs or data sources together. 

EiPaaS also supports better core integration practices. It integrates data in real time and provides robust data security and protection (which has become more standard with the normalization of GPDR compliance for international vendors). EiPaaS has also normalized support for developers to build and integrate microservice-structured architectures and data flows with older, monolithic programs. 

EiPaaS also offer a more developed feature list. Enterprise-level services include the ability to build integrations from scratch in the program, either by using drag-and-drop interfaces for citizen integrators or via code for specialists. Most EiPaaS also support hybrid integration between cloud-based and on-premise systems, applications, and data centers. They frequently enable more complex workflow automation, including many workflows with multiple steps and some data transformation capabilities.

Given that iPaaS interacts directly with an organization’s data, vendors have also begun providing analytics and insights into your SaaS ecosystem via health and dependency monitoring. Partly due to the growing list of available features ,vendors are more frequently packaging their platforms as suites of products and services hosted on a unified platform so buyers can customize what services they’re buying.

It’s important to note that EiPaaS does require higher-skilled technical users and investment from the organization. While the iPaaS market has grown more user-friendly with lower technical barriers to entry, TrustRadius reviewer demographic information indicates that the majority of users still tend to be IT professionals or specialists within their organization. These products require more work and time to onboard and manage long-term than SMB-oriented products. 

If this sounds like the level of integration or features that your organization could benefit from, here are some of the key players in the EiPaaS market in the vendors’ alphabetical order. For a comprehensive list of iPaaS offerings, visit the category list and reviews.

Meet the Major Players

Dell Boomi

Dell Boomi is a unified platform offering. It provides the core functionality of an EiPaaS, including API management, data privacy regulatory compliance, and workflow automation. Boomi reviewers have highlighted the user experience and hybrid integration capabilities as what sets Boomi apart. Boomi’s low-code or no-code options empower Line of Business (LOB) professionals to build simple integrations themselves, while specialists can dive into more complex automations and integrations.

Hybrid integration between cloud-based and on-premise systems has also benefited organizations that are either still using legacy systems or in the process of transitioning to a cloud-based infrastructure. Boomi also offers more niche features, such as data transformation capabilities to automatically get data in the format that the end receiver requires to immediately begin utilizing the information.

Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services

Informatica’s Intelligent Cloud Services (IICS) leans most heavily into the development and adoption of microservices architecture. While microservices technology is not new, it has emerged as a method of more efficiently updating and improving iPaaS products as well as modularizing the product so buyers can more easily align what they pay for with what they actually use.

While many EiPaaS vendors are developing support for integrating microservices from 3^rd parties, Informatica is an early adopter of building their own product as a series of microservices. This allows Informatica to offer its services as discrete, independent products on top of the platform itself. These services include API management, Master Data Management, B2B onboarding, data quality and governance monitoring, and data security, among others.

Mulesoft’s Anypoint Platform

Mulesoft’s Anypoint Platform has made waves in the last year primarily due to Salesforce acquiring the company in 2018. Beyond becoming more aligned with Salesforce’s other offerings, Mulesoft is a standout EiPaaS in its own right, with strong developer tools and growing accessibility for citizen integrators. It offers a hybrid deployment option, and support for 3^rd party microservices integration.

Mulesoft offers enterprise-level security, with edge gateways, sensitive data protection, and regulatory compliance standards. Reviewers have emphasized the value of Mulesoft’s automated data transformation capabilities and other developer tools.

Oracle

There may eventually be a day when we can discuss enterprise technology without mentioning Oracle, but that’s not today. Oracle’s integration services exemplify the “suite” packaging style, with specific services targeting various integration needs. Application connectors are Oracle’s primary value proposition, but it also offers a platform for API management, an SOA suite, a Self-Service Integration Cloud Service (SSI) for Line of Business integrators. Oracle attempts to lower the technical barrier to entry across its services via low-code automation and multi-device support.

TIBCO Cloud

TIBCO set the precedent for Mulesoft’s acquisition when it purchased BusinessWorks and Scribe for its iPaaS offerings. These acquisitions strengthen TIBCO’s support for developers and citizen integrators alike. Its EiPaaS includes hybrid integration and a no-code interface. The BusinessWorks product supports microservices development via data containerization. TIBCO differentiates itself further with it’s self-described “API-led integration”, utilizing an open API for Java developers to maximize the platform’s utility.