Today’s B2B network is expected to deliver on several business objectives across different engagement channels, stakeholder ecosystems, engagement channels, etc. In addition, the network needs to be able to fuse new speeds and adopt new market realities without missing a beat in uptime. The ability to quickly integrate, people, technology, and processes allow organizations to set up a model that translates all these needs.
What is Agile Integration?
Agile Integration is the hyper fast and continuous integration of B2B networks with so that data across different B2B networks can be harnessed for different purposes. Easy to build integration constructs help enterprises in creating highly interdependent systems that respond faster to customer’s needs and drive more value.
Why Agile Integration Needs to Be Taken Seriously for Digital First Initiatives?
Lack of agile integration is the primary reason behind the abandonment of most digital initiatives. Without proper integration, enterprises cannot overcome technical debt and poor data governance. Enterprises relying on old approaches or manual verification steps for integration waste several months in the rollout of integrations. They lose the edge to enterprises which can quickly establish IT cohesion that can build integrations in a continuous way. Self-service advantage reduces IT governance complexity, and time-consuming implementation cycles.
The ability to integrate B2B networks with agility is an enormous advantage, it allows businesses to align technologies, overcome technical debt and set up a digital-first strategy. Agile integration adds unique value to the existing B2B ecosystem and provides answers to rapidly multiplying questions related to hybrid cloud and keep up with the synchronization related demands of modern applications.
Application Performance Interface (API) Led Integrations & Kickbacks
API led integrations are cumbersome to configure and hard to maintain or monitor. Heavy synchronization support and re-engineering are required to generate an API request. Also, API led integrations come with a lot of security risks. Huge security updates are required to prevent vulnerabilities from entering the APIs. Most API led solutions don’t have an interface and they are difficult to be monitored.
A Perfect Solution for Hybrid B2B Networks
For years, enterprises are using point-to-point connectivity for establishing connectivity between monolithic applications.However, owing to high complexity and difficulty in scaling, such connections are not seen as the best solution for hybrid B2B networks.
On the contrast, self-service integration can be deployed independently for facilitating integrations in a hybrid network. It allows business users and not IT to build configurations that are more adaptive for digital use cases. The solutions configured by the business users are better aligned for the business and IT goals.
Agile integration helps teams in progressing towards a connective world where business teams can transform the way business transactions are done. They can assume a central role in ensuring data governance, creating vibrant partner ecosystems, and reaching new customers without lengthy delivery cycles.
For today’s enterprises, the ability to quickly deliver complex B2B integration projects is a dire need. They need an agile foundation that helps them react faster to technology and business shifts. Coalescing around agile integration can help them streamline B2B networks without the need of going through lengthy development cycles. However Agile integration is a continuous process rather than a typical waterfall IT project, it takes hard work and planning to get right.
In our next part, we will discuss key factors to consider for delivering agile integration.