Internship @ I8C about Integration-As-A-Service

The past 10 weeks we - Siebe Le Duc and Stijn Waegmans - did our internship at I8C to do research about Cloud Integration tools. We did research on the Iaas tools Babelway, Boomi and Cast Iron and the Paas tool Windows Azure. We concluded that:

• Babelway is a good B2B point-to-point solution,
• Boomi has many B2B Saas Integration possibilities for both on-premises to Saas and Saas to Saas communications,
• Cast Iron offers application-to-application integration solutions for both on-premises as in the cloud,
• Windows Azure is a good platform for hosting applications, but is in full flux on the integration side, the AppFabric Service Bus.

During our internship we have discovered that the Integration world is a huge world and there are a lot of things happening at this very moment.
One area that can be an important advantage for Integration-as-a-service is the social platform. Because all the processes are developed and deployed in the cloud, the providers of the services can  form a good image of what processes are build by their customers. This becomes interesting when they use the information to help other users.
Boomi is already doing this by its ‘Boomi suggest’ option in the mapping. Cast Iron is doing this by providing ‘TIPs’. In Babelway companies can set their message profiles or transfer protocol specifications available to others to use for free. Pervasive does this by their ‘Pervasive Galaxy’ that is a platform to buy and sell apps and even make arrangements for cooperation between Pervasive users. So the social platform exists but it can be further developed and offer a huge advantage over non-cloud competition.
We are sure Cloud Integration will continue to grow and will take an increasingly big chunk of the integration market, if the use of different Saas solutions will keep growing. This growth can’t be without growing pains for the Cloud Integration tools and there will be new big changes in the future.
You find our final internship presentation here (slideshare).
We had a great and instructive time at I8C and would like to thank Guy Crets and the rest of the I8C team for supporting us throughout the entire internship.

Authors: Stijn and Siebe