A Forbes article recently talked about hybrid integration only focusing on the delivery methods and patterns of integration. Yet, for all the pieces of the hybrid integration platform (HIP) to come together, the article misses focusing on the real center and heart of hybrid integration. The article left out the shift in the operation model for IT, from factory to the enabler–with HIP as a vehicle for offering integration as a service. This is a real key point for HIP!
READ MORE: Check out my article on Hybrid in HIP | It may distract.
A hybrid integration platform strategy embraced by any organization–our customers or otherwise, reckons with a mix of incumbent integration technologies as well as emerging. Essential is (1) taking inventory, (2) defining requirements, (3) building and delivering self-service integration embracing the mix of the incumbent, and new. Simply ripping out one’s ESB is not realistic day one and much more is needed for success.
Core to our approach with AMPLIFY is the catalog and our API Centricity. The open catalog exists for sharing integration artifacts that are from ours and from technology outside of our offering. The catalog is at the heart of the experience for integrators outside of IT to access integration artifacts, APIs and otherwise to extend, build, complete, publish and consume to support new initiatives. This approach enables a new speed, a new pace and a transformation that can move an organization beyond bi-modal to a new speed or operating and innovating altogether. Moreover, this new speed is essential to delivering valuable business outcomes through brilliant experiences and is after all the real point of this all. Without this goal, it’s just an academic debate.
Back to the article, what else is missing?
In the article, there is a later point raised about MESH and cloud-native. This is interesting in two sides not fully elaborated on:
- A MESH-based approach to integration tooling itself (cloud-native integration as the author states).
- A hybrid integration platform that embraces MESH for managing API traffic in a distributed MESH.
The latter is key to embracing new development practices and MESH architectures for observability and API policy in new innovations. The former is the logical approach to net new integration technologies (and is our approach).
Hybrid integration inconsistencies
The article emphasizes the architecture of the integration technology itself and really riffs on this cloud-native concept. This is interesting but not essential. This misses the point of hybrid integration–his opening subject. A hybrid integration platform—beneficial if it is cloud-native for cloud-scale and portability of course!
But more so important is if it can be used and operated to scale ultimately integration through the company for supporting digital transformation via the pace and speed needed to differentiate and win markets.
Do you want to know more about hybrid integration platforms? Learn more in our resource library.
To really understand the true benefits of hybrid integration, you have to dig down deep. Read what you need to know about hybrid integration.