Roundtables

Integration today: what are the challenges?

Integration is crucial for running digital companies. How can they get it right?

16 November 2021

The first public API was debuted in February 2000 by Salesforce, when it launched the Software-as-a-Service platform. Soon, two major companies followed suit. eBay released its first API by the end of that year, and in 2002, Amazon made an API available to give third parties access to product listings on the online retail site.

Today, integration is evident in practically every enterprise technology environment, and the question as to whether you should integrate is no longer relevant, says Jonathan Heywood, senior vice president of integration at Software AG. “Most organisations have mastered integration at some level. They’ve implemented an enterprise service bus or something similar inside their datacentre to link applications together. What’s making that more challenging now is the shift to cloud. Organisations are rapidly adopting cloud applications. Maybe they’re lifting-and-shifting their existing applications to cloud, adopting SaaS applications, or building new differentiating applications on cloud stacks. What that means is, until recently, all of your data was within your control in your datacentre. Now, your data is in all four corners of the internet, and that brings new challenges with it.”

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