As discussed at the beginning of the articles on iPaaS (that you can read here >> Introduction to iPaaS and How iPaaS works?), IT products and services evolve much more than other products or services from other business areas. The reason is that the market is more demanding, customers have more and more needs that must be solved by IT applications.
Obviously, iPaaS is not an exception from the above rule. Although it has rather a short history (approx. 12 years), there are multiple theories and predictions regarding the next generation of iPaaS platforms.
For instance, many analysts believe that we will see a market consolidation, meaning that small players will be eaten by IT giants. One positive effect of such market consolidation theory is that iPaaS platforms version 2.0 should be more user friendly. E.g. would allow non-technical savy people to add new integration workflows themselves, without the need for consulting services from iPaaS vendors.
But Do It Yourself feature is not the only improvement that customers expect from iPaaS version 2.0. Here are more examples:
- More prebuilt connectors; this will increase the quality but also the cost of the setup time.
- Low code or even code-less, to reduce cost of implementation
- Workflow automation
- Flexible pricing i.e. pay for what you use; iPaaS platforms should allow paying only for volume of data sent and not for integration workflows that are under-utilized
- Ensure data quality
- Improved Cloud security: sensitive data should be quickly identified and protected (e.g. Personel data)
- Master data management: provide full overview of key data (customer, vendor, etc)
- Self service: iPaaS should allow more customization from technical or nontechnical key users from the customer.
- Legacy applications: iPaaS platforms will need to propose (accelerated) solutions to integrate the legacy applications, the same way they integrate the modern cloud applications
- Big data (analytics): iPaaS will cope with more and bigger data sets and return valuable information to the customer
- Business insights: iPaaS should not only show if certain integrations work, but should trigger business alerts if some processes are stuck (sales processes, etc). These triggers will save customers lots of money, by avoiding business downtimes.
- Internet of Things (IoT): the increasing volume of smart devices (tens of billions in next years) will need more powerful iPaaS to send data to enterprise apps.
- Integrate BlockChain: due to the fast adoption of BlockChain by the customers, it is expected they will require iPaaS to have blockchain features.
- Mobile apps: It is already clear that mobile devices will outnumber desktop devices, for browsing the Internet or using applications. As consequence, iPaaS will need to integrate with these mobile devices also.
- Social platforms: the customers of iPaaS customers are very active on social platforms, therefore iPaaS needs to collect data regarding the preferences of customers.
- Artificial Intelligence: CIOs from all companies want to extract as much information as possible from the huge data chunks that are transferred through iPaaS.
In terms of sales revenues, iPaaS remains one of the fastest growing enterprise software market segments. Market predictions vary from moderate to optimistic, but on average, the estimate for 2021 is minimum 2 billion $, while forecast for 2025 is close to 10 billion $, considering an annual growth rate of 40% yearly.
From a region perspective, North America is expected to have the biggest role in the growth of iPaaS market. This is due to having the largest customers being situated in the US, while many of iPaaS vendors are also located in the US: Boomi, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Informatica, MuleSoft.
From a line of business perspective, there are traditional areas that require more and more integrations, e.g. finance&insurance, retail, media&entertainment, IT&C, consumer goods.
At the same time, there are other predictions that the iPaaS market will grow much more moderately. So, instead of 40% yearly, it could be a maximum of 10%. This would be due to challenges in implementing iPaaS platforms e.g. related to the initial cost of implementation and some interoperability issues. Last but not least, there is always the traditional Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) alternative.
Instead of a conclusion, I’m asking myself if the fancy dream of iPaaS vendors will materialize i.e. iPaaS to become as popular as the traditional CRMs, ERPs or E-Commerce apps.
Let us wait and see!
PS: in our next and final episode of iPaaS series, we will discover the Cegeka offering regarding iPaaS, including a customer success story.