The year 2017 was a benchmark for the Integration tech market, which appeared to be consolidating. The Integration tech has a lot of room to grow in 2018 as well. You will be able to bring multiple teams sitting in different places to pull out a strategy. And you will be able to integrate and work with multidimensional data generated by Android, iOS or smart machines. Encrypting and protecting data will become much easier. Here are some similar trends that will be shaping the integration technology market in 2018:
Intelligent Mesh for strong Artificial Intelligence (AI) foundation: Enterprises are deploying a huge number of proprietary analysis and machine learning tools with different underlying architectures. Some functionalities offered by these solutions will operate autonomously or semi autonomously. As a result, enterprises will spend millions of dollars in maintaining and upkeeping these systems. Without a strong interwiring, you cannot get maximum mileage from these tools. An intelligent mesh will be required to incorporate AI into the analytics. With multiple protocols, an integration technology can effectively manage these endpoints and eliminate IT complexity.
System of Record for B2B flows: B2B enterprises are facing tough times because of rising customer demands and jostling competition from new disruptive entrants & tech-driven behemoths. The future belongs to those enterprises which are willing to restructure their B2B model as per changing environment. Smarter organizations will focus on ‘system of innovation’ rather than ‘system of records.’ Out-of-the-box B2B flows for System of Record’ will help those companies in achieving success with such endeavors and becoming more agile. These functionalities will provide a flexible and collaborative approach for planning stock requirements, scheduling production, managing multiple warehouses & inventory, and managing goods. With end-to-end B2B flows, smart enterprises will enable a central account which operates smoothly across all channels.
Compliance management, governance, audit tracking, and SLA tracking: Integration patterns will require even better compliance management functionalities to drive business ahead. Compliance involves both internal as well as external compliance requirements. The problems are even bigger for energy, healthcare, and financial institutions where there is poor data visibility. For example, Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) is a benchmark for organizations handling card schemes. And there is also Sarbanes–Oxley, a law that sets expanded requirements for public accounting firms. Therefore, aggregating huge chunks of data will not be free from compliance related challenges. A next generation integration will have to measure compliance reporting across all organizational frameworks. On top of that, it must enable monitoring and control of flows of compliance issues of flows across all layers. Companies with encryption, user authentication, and process execution meta-data will be able to successfully adhere to compliances in the future.
Rich forms will allow further customization by hubs: Another rich capability to lookout for will be dynamic and rich forms for supporting traditional and modern EDI standards. It will be one of the key factors to connect hubs (organizations) with their spokes (trading partners). This integration feature will help organizations in becoming cost prohibitive in the future. With this capability, organizations can connect faster with traditional (ANSI X12/ EDIFACT) and proprietary standards (NACHA/ BAI).
Automated Super Maps: Looking at digital transformation is like gazing on a buffet of technologies spanning across the ballroom. Where organizations are being tempted to try each one of them. But without advanced data mapping features many organizations can end up in disaster. Integration functionalities will further evolve to support machine learning and artificial intelligence needs. Automated super maps will help users to accelerate the implementation of EDI maps and makes the creation of new maps much more manageable.