By IaaS, I meant “Integration as a Service” not “Infrastructure as a Service”. Now that I got your attention let’s continue!

After my blog: “Cloud Computing Connections – It’s All About Plumbing”, I did a deeper dive into cloud integration challenges. Does the much ballyhooed term of “Integration as a Service” that some folks use to categorize cloud solutions have a limited shelf life?Some acquisitions in the cloud computing space, especially those related to application integration, definitely make the integration challenge as it relates to cloud initiatives confusing and cloudy.

There are a couple of assumptions for this to become true. One assumption is that integration is application connectivity and does not include BPM or other foundational products (BPM will be in another blog). The second assumption is that customers force “Software/Application as a Service”(SaaS) vendors to adhere to common integration standards as part of their offerings. SalesForce and Workday are examples of SaaS vendors providing excellent API integration.

SaaS to SaaS connectivity should be something customers expect, and vendors deliver. One of the basic premises of cloud computing is delivery over the internet. This ensures that each application has the underlying protocols to communicate with each other available for use. What the remains is whether standards can reduce the need for customers to depend on their own expertise to integrate these applications.

Some “integration as a service” vendors definitely are playing an extremely important role today. However, that role is limited to on-premise to cloud application connectivity. I feel that role is of diminishing importance as customers start using more and more applications to SaaS vendors.  As automation addresses the integration challenge, the ROI for migrating to SaaS solutions will improve.