Integration has traditionally been considered a purely technical solution to be used as a tool to integrate many different systems.
But organizations are realizing that integration is no longer only a technical question for an organization, but rather a business requirement.
This shift began even prior to the COVID-19 era, but it is now more apparent than ever that the pandemic has had a huge impact on our society; in the ways we conduct business as well as how we communicate and provide services. People are using many different sets of applications to take care of their daily business needs, and none of these applications work alone – they need to communicate with several other applications to perform the task. Therefore, organizations’ integration strategy has become a business topic and can no longer be delegated to the IT department.
The business landscape is changing
We can clearly see how the business landscape is changing. Where historically the focus was on delivering high quality products, the focus has shifted towards a more results-oriented mindset where customers perceive value differently. Organizations have now started talking about added value of products or services, rather than purely considering the cost, and it is playing a major role in decision-making processes.
It is interesting to see how the changes in the business landscape have impacted technology solutions. Over the last few years, we have seen a revolution, where organizations are looking for flexibility and adopting fast changing technology like AI and IoT. It is no longer the case that one enterprise application is taking care of all business needs. Every team or department has the freedom to choose their own tools and solutions, whatever best fits their business requirements. In order to meet the requirement of flexibility, it’s important that ERP solutions address the future challenges and provide an ecosystem to support innovation.
Flexibility to meet the future challenges of ERP
COVID-19 and the shift towards online purchasing over traditional physical stores, has shown that current ERP systems are not agile or flexible enough to keep pace with the required speed of change driven by customer behavior. Even before the Covid-19 era monolithic ERP was a major hurdle in organizations' modernization strategy, due to heavy customization and application limitations. Thereby pushing organizations to revisit their ERP strategy.
To ensure that all applications together with the core ERP system work seamlessly together and deliver the expected results, it is important to have an integration platform that makes this possible.
Picking the right integration platform
In its simplest term, an Integration platform is software that supports a number of applications to integrate across on-premises resources and cloud. Some of the major benefits are optimizing business processes and reducing cost and bottlenecks.
The first step any organization needs to take when selecting an integration platform and an API management platform, is to choose which available platform is best suited for their business requirements. There are of course several options available on the market with its own pros and cons. It is important to focus on features supported by the specific platform and its business usage.
Some important points to keep in mind when selecting the integration platform:
1. Integration anywhere with any applications
In this innovation era, the number of applications being used by organizations is increasing at a very fast pace. All these applications need to communicate with each other, and with the applications from customers and vendors. These applications have the possibility to run from any location and/or any server. It is important that the integration platform supports all these integrations.
2. Fast development
To support business expansion, it is important that newly acquired systems work together with existing systems. To get maximum benefits it is important that this integration happens very fast. Therefore, investigate which integration platforms support low code with auto-deployment features.
3. Hybrid solution
Lots of new systems are available as a SaaS (Software as a Service) solution or running in the cloud. At the same time most of the legacy applications are still running on-premise. Organizations will achieve maximum benefits when data between the systems in the cloud and on-premise communicate with each other. Silos are no longer an option for organizations: an integration platform should support hybrid solutions.
4. Flexibility
It is important that the integration platform is flexible enough to take care of the ever-changing application landscape. This means that the platform should not only support both cloud and on-premises applications, but also have the capability to scale up and scale down when needed.
5. API Management
It doesn’t matter if a solution is based on a microservice, is monolithic or if legacy applications are being used – data between systems need to communicate with each other. API management is the process of creating and publishing API, enforcing their usage policies, controlling access, nurturing the subscriber community, collecting and analyzing usage statistics, and reporting on performance. API Management is one of most crucial requirements for a successful digital journey of any organization.
TietoEVRY is well established in the Nordics with global delivery capabilities and expertise in both ERP and integration solutions. With deep industry knowledge, we serve the unique needs of over 1,600 customers across the Nordics. We have more than 2 decades of delivery experience in different integration technologies, and we are working very closely with all integration platform partners. Boomi is playing a major role in our customers ERP modernization plan, and the partnership between Tietoevry and Boomi supports customers that are looking for either new IFS implementation or modernization.
Why Boomi?
Not only did Boomi invent iPaaS (integration Platform as a Service), but they also continue to push the boundaries and lead the evolution of what iPaaS means and the value it brings to your organization. Through the breadth and depth of the Boomi Atmosphere Platform, we help you to get to market faster, operate more efficiently, and differentiate in a composable architecture in which we have highlighted some important strengths of Boomi like:
- Cloud native platform: Leveraging the power of the cloud, Boomi’s single instance multi-tenant platform provides all the benefits of cloud, including flexibility, agility, design patterns, scalability, high availability, built-in redundancy, and automatic upgrades. Eliminate massive capital costs and the complexities of maintaining software on-premises, and ensure all customers automatically benefit from the latest features and functionality.
- Distributed architecture: The Boomi Atom, a patented, lightweight runtime engine allows integrations to be deployed wherever needed: in Boomi’s Atom Cloud, in a public or private cloud, or on-premises. Multiple Atoms can be clustered as a Boomi Molecule to provide a highly scalable, distributed processing runtime. Seamlessly connect your entire digital enterprise across on-premises and multi-cloud environments all the way to IoT and edge devices, as well as support exponentially growing data volumes, while ensuring low-latency and high-performance.
- Low Code Visual UI: Boomi’s drag and drop visual UI and low code platform ensure the greatest speed and flexibility to support a wide range of projects – from the simple to the most complex. Most integrations can be handled via Boomi’s out-of-the-box, drag and-drop interface. For complex or specialized integration scenarios, Boomi offers advanced developer tools to ensure effective project delivery.
- Unified platform: Quickly and easily discover and catalog your data; ensure data synchronization; integrate myriad applications, databases, devices within your enterprise; extend connectivity across your partner ecosystem; design, secure and scale APIs, and build automated workflows that enhance human interaction with data. Boomi’s cohesive and coherent set of services ensure holistic and actionable connectivity across your business ecosystem.
- Support for varied skill levels: Support integration specialists and empower business users/citizen integrators including harnessing AI to simplify building projects, starter templates (via process libraries) and pre-built integration accelerators for common use case.
The joint capabilities of Tietoevry and Boomi supports our customers’ ERP modernization journey
Tietoevry and Boomi share a common goal of enabling digital transformation for our customers by increasing efficiency and elevating employee and customer satisfaction across their entire ecosystems. As a leading system integrator and service provider it is important for us to offer industry experience and technical expertise to support and enable our customers’ digitalization journey. Together with the leading enterprise iPaaS provider Boomi, we help our customers to seamlessly connect data, applications, and other technology with IFS solutions.
The partnership between Tietoevry and Boomi helps customers establish faster integration between IFS ERP and other systems, whether you are looking for a new IFS implementation or modernization of an existing system. The quick and cost-efficient integration enables customers to respond to changing business needs by making data, interactions and innovations flow faster. With Boomi’s intelligent, flexible and scalable integration platform, and our expertise in ERP and integration solutions, our global delivery capabilities and deep industry knowledge – we can deliver continued innovation and functionality to accelerate digital transformation.
Check out the webinar with Rakesh and Claes on this topic for more insights into how your integration strategy can enable your business goals
Curious to learn more about the solutions and services we are delivering? Don’t hesitate to contact us!
Rakesh Singh, Solution Head, Integration and API management at Tietoevry
Out of over 16 years of IT experience, Rakesh has spent 12 of those years working with different integration platforms. Rakesh joined TietoEVRY in 2010. Since then he has been involved in several large deliveries and sales cases where he has designed integration solutions based on multiple technology platforms. In his current role as global solution head for Integration and API management, Rakesh is responsible for supporting TietoEVRY:s customers in their Integration and API management journey. Contact Rakesh
Claes Huber, Sales Manager Sweden at Boomi
Claes has been active in the IT Industry for over 30 years in several business development roles in various companies like Software AG and Informatica. The main part of his career he has been working on integration projects with a focus on the Financial Services and Manufacturing Industries. Claes joined Boomi in 2019 as Senior Account Executive for Sweden. At Boomi he collaborates with customers and partners in the IT ecosystem helping them to accelerate their business through the Boomi Integration Platform as a Service. Contact Claes