2. 2
Overview
It’s not correct to say that businesses operate “in the cloud.” Rather, they
can operate in as many as half a dozen clouds because of the proliferation
of applications and SaaS providers. It presents quite a challenge to unify
these very disparate systems and get them to work in a unified fashion, but
in order to achieve digital transformation, developers have to ensure that all
systems within an enterprise are integrated.
4. 4
Providing an External HTTP or HTTPS Port
“The most critical issues in integrating are correctly mapping the
business data objects between solutions and ensuring the
integrations are implemented in a way that guarantees reliability,
availability and consistency across systems,” says Ken Yagen, our
vice president of products. “Every system has its own governance
about how you can access data (such as availability SLAs, throttling
limits, record limits, et cetera) and their own schedule on when APIs
or data objects change.”
5. 5
Providing an External HTTP or HTTPS Port
But integrating disparate systems isn’t the only thing developers need
to consider when helping their businesses on the path of digital
transformation. “Developers also need to keep in mind that people
within and outside an enterprise will be able to access parts of the
network using consumption models that are familiar to their way of
working. By decentralizing IT, developers allow the integrated SaaS
solutions to be adopted across the enterprise, not just through a
central IT function,” Ken notes.
6. 6
Providing an External HTTP or HTTPS Port
So what do developers need to make these enterprise integrations
happen in a way that makes sense across the enterprise? “A
developer needs an integration platform that abstracts and manages
many of these concerns,” Ken advises. In addition, he recommends
“taking an API-led approach to connectivity, where you build
purposeful APIs that represent various systems, processes and
experiences. The componentized APIs are reusable and can be
modified quickly without disrupting business processes.”
7. 7
MORE
Providing an External HTTP or HTTPS Port
Ken points out that a good connectivity platform can assist
developers in abstracting away the need to custom code integrations,
and can provide templates and out-of-the-box connectors that can
make integrations easy and fast. From a business perspective, Ken
also notes it’s important to “understand how to shift to composability
with API-led connectivity [in order to] build a relationship between
developers and the rest of the business to retain a company’s
competitive status in the market.”
