How to Sync Text, Date, and Picklist Custom Fields Between Jira and Azure DevOps

Jira Azure DevOps integration

This post has been published in the Atlassian community.

Jira Azure DevOps integration is the need of the day. Both Jira and Azure DevOps offer robust features but when it comes to integrating data like custom fields, things can get tricky. 

This is where tools like Exalate can help, ensuring your custom data flows effortlessly between Jira and Azure DevOps.

In this blog, we’ll dive into a common use case: syncing custom fields between Jira and Azure DevOps. 

We’ll explore the key custom fields—Text, Picklist, and Date—and provide code snippets to illustrate how Exalate makes this process straightforward. 

Why Sync Custom Fields?

Custom fields allow teams to capture unique data that goes beyond standard fields like summary or status. By syncing custom fields, you ensure that all teams, regardless of the platform they use, have access to the same critical information. This leads to better collaboration, reduced errors, and a unified workflow.

Setting Up the Environment for Syncing Custom Fields between Jira and Azure DevOps

Start by installing Exalate on Jira and Azure DevOps and connect them using the Script mode. 

The Script mode has incoming and outgoing sync rules written using low-code Groovy scripts. You can edit them at both integrating ends to meet your sync requirements. 

To send custom field data from a Jira issue field to its corresponding Azure DevOps work item field you’d need to modify the outgoing sync rules of your Jira instance. 

You would also need to receive the data coming from Jira in some work item field. For this, you’d need to modify the incoming sync rules of your Azure DevOps instance. 

To do this the other way around, simply reverse the codes in the incoming and outgoing sync scripts. 

That’s all! Set an automatic trigger as the next step and see your data synced smoothly between the systems. 

Custom Fields Sync: A Deeper Look

Jira to Azure DevOps Text Field Sync

Text fields are commonly used to capture detailed information. Whether it’s a technical description or customer feedback, syncing text fields ensures that all teams have a consistent narrative.

//Jira outgoing sync
replica.customFields."CF Name" = issue.customFields."CF Name"

//Azure DevOps incoming sync
workItem.customFields."CF Name".value = replica.customFields."CF Name".value

Here, we simply map the text field from Jira to Azure DevOps and vice versa. Exalate takes care of the data transformation and transmission.

Jira to Azure DevOps Picklist (Select List) Field Sync

Picklist or select list fields are perfect for categorizing information, like selecting a priority level or feature type. Syncing these ensures that the categorizations are consistent across platforms.

//Jira outgoing sync
replica.customFields."CF Name" = issue.customFields."CF Name"

//Azure DevOps incoming sync workItem.customFields."CF Name".value = replica.customFields."CF Name".value.value

The code snippet captures the picklist object with its values in one platform and assigns it to the corresponding field in the other.

Jira to Azure DevOps Date Field Sync

Date fields are essential for tracking deadlines, milestones, and other time-sensitive data. Keeping dates in sync prevents miscommunications and scheduling conflicts.

//Jira outgoing sync
replica.customFields."CF Name" = issue.customFields."CF Name"
//Azure DevOps incoming sync
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat....def sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss")def targetDate = sdf.format(new Date())

//throw new Exception("Target date = ${targetDate}")workItem."Microsoft.VSTS.Scheduling.StartDate" = targetDate

This snippet ensures that the date values are synchronized, keeping project timelines aligned.

Best Practices for Syncing Custom Fields Between Jira and Azure DevOps

  • Consistent field types: Ensure that the custom fields in Jira and Azure DevOps have compatible types.
  • Field mapping: Carefully map the fields to avoid data loss or misinterpretation.
  • Testing: Always test the sync setup in a sandbox environment before deploying it in production.

Conclusion

Synchronizing custom fields between Jira and Azure DevOps can enhance your project’s efficiency and transparency. It ensures all teams have access to the same data, regardless of the platforms they use.

Ready to sync more data between Jira and Azure DevOps? Book a demo with us and find out how!

Recommended Reading:

Why Two-way Sync is Essential for Modern Teams 

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Remember when teams huddled over the same screen, using a single app to get things done? Those days are long gone. Today, each team has specialized tools for their tasks. But these tools often don’t talk to each other, leaving vital information siloed.

That’s where two-way synchronization, or two-way sync, comes in. It seamlessly updates, adds, or deletes information across systems, ensuring data consistency and accuracy.

Manually sharing data is one option, but it could be more error-prone and tedious. An automated solution is crucial to keep everyone on the same page in real-time.

Let’s dive deeper into how two-way synchronization works and why it’s essential.

What is a Two-way Sync?

A two-way sync is a process that updates, adds, or deletes information between two connected systems such that changes made in one system are reflected accurately in the other and vice versa. 

Imagine a calendar app that you use on your smartphone and your laptop. When you add an event on your laptop, you expect it to appear immediately on your phone, and if you delete it on one device, it should disappear from the other. These simultaneous edits across devices or systems portray how a two-way sync looks like in practice. 

In the context of data integration, two-way synchronization, also called bidirectional sync, ensures data remains consistent across two or more systems and minimizes errors arising from outdated or conflicting data. 

Additionally, leaving data to remain updated on all devices automatically allows teams to focus on strategic initiatives rather than routine data entry or reconciliation tasks. 

Access to real-time synced data empowers teams with actionable insights, enabling faster and more informed decision-making processes. 

You might have also come across a one-way sync. 

Increased harmony between teams

Difference Between One-way and Two-way Sync

In one-way synchronization data is passed only in a single direction, from one system to another. Consider a Managed Services Provider (MSP) that provides managed services to its customers. Data almost always passes from the MSP to the customer and never the other way around. This is an example of a one-way synchronization. 

When discussing two-way synchronization, the data always remains consistent and accurate between both the connected systems. In one-way synchronization, data is only allowed to pass from system A to system B and not from system B to system A. If data changes or is deleted in system A, then the corresponding changes are reflected in system B. 

This is a little different from automation. Automations are usually one-way, for instance, create a Slack notification when a new lead books a product demo. There’s hardly any one-on-one connection between the automated entities. Once the notification is set off, the relationship ceases to exist. 

On the other hand, two-way synchronization is an integration that establishes and maintains an ongoing relationship between the synced entities. So, if one entity is updated in one system, it’s also updated in another system. 

How does a Two-way Synchronization Work?

There are some simple steps you need to follow to set up a fully functional bidirectional sync. 

Gather the Requirements

Two-way sync is about connecting systems to exchange meaningful data. But before the actual data starts flowing, it’s important to understand the individual systems in play. Identify and analyze their data structures and how your workflows are embedded within them. This will come in handy when you want to send data from one system to another since you don’t want to lose critical information or replace your existing workflows. 

For instance, integrating a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system like Salesforce with an email marketing platform requires understanding how the contacts, leads, and campaigns are structured in both systems. 

Take into account Data Mappings & Customizations 

Next, define the fields you want to sync with the other system. Also, define how they would correspond (or map) to those in the other system. Such a mapping ensures that relevant information such as names, addresses, and statuses are correctly synchronized between systems despite potential differences in data formats or naming conventions.

Efficient data update

Choose Your Sync Method 

REST APIs are endpoints you can leverage to establish a two-way sync between your applications. Typically software developers or synchronization platforms act as intermediaries who use these APIs to write custom code to enable applications to communicate with each other either in real-time or at scheduled intervals. 

These middleware technologies check for updates in both systems to initiate synchronization via data polling or webhooks. 

An example of data polling is where a CRM periodically checks for new leads or updates to existing customer records in an email marketing tool, ensuring the system it connects to remains up-to-date. 

Webhooks work as an alternative to polling by allowing systems to notify each other immediately when specific events occur, such as a new customer inquiry or a completed purchase. 

Describe Your Sync Architecture

Sync architecture defines how, when, and what data must flow between the connecting systems. 

The how part defines the direction of data flow. For instance, data passing only in a single direction from customer systems to their (Managed Service Providers) MSPs. No data passes from the MSP back to the customer. 

The when defines the conditions to start an automatic one-way or two-way sync. For instance, automatically sync all bugs labeled ‘todev’ into the dev team’s application. 

The what of the sync architecture refers to the actual data that’s being passed between systems. Choose what you want to sync and refrain from sending any additional data. 

Sometimes, two-way sync solutions allow you to sync historical data. 

Easy status and comment sync with a button click

Find the Right Solution to Implement Your Two-way Sync 

You can either build your own two-way synchronization from scratch by using system APIs or choose to buy a commercial off-the-shelf product. 

We also have a guide on why building a two-way sync solution yourself is not always the best option. 

Be careful while choosing commercially available synchronization solutions. Choose them categorically based on your requirements and needs. 

Give security due importance. When data leaves your system it becomes more prone to unwanted attacks or unauthorized access. 

Your bidirectional synchronization requirements might probably change with time. New field mappings might arise, or you might stop syncing existing fields. It should be easy to do all of this using the solution you choose. 

Having a scalable two-way sync solution will ensure your sync and business requirements always align. 

Understanding how two-way synchronization looks like in practice is also important. 

From my experience in sales for a while, I have often seen prospects looking to connect their systems in the following ways. 

Use Cases For Two-way Sync

Companies wanting a two-way sync usually try the following two ways. 

One: connect applications their internal teams or departments used. 

Two: connect with other companies who act as their partners, suppliers, vendors, or customers. 

Support and Development Sync

Often software development teams prefer to work in their own systems like Jira, GitHub, or Azure DevOps. They have a certain comfort level with these tools since they have their dev workflows set up and don’t want to switch to any other application. 

Customer support teams usually have dedicated systems like Jira Service Management (JSM), GitHub, Zendesk, etc. 

Certain customer requests to the support team might require the dev team’s attention. Automatic two-way communication between these teams can keep them up-to-date and well-informed on recent customer tickets, enhancing the overall customer experience. 

Synchronization solution autonomy for data sharing

ITSM Integration

ITSM tools like ServiceNow, ManageEngine’s ServiceDesk Plus, JSM, etc. are the go-to tools for effective service management. Teams using these tools can benefit if service workflows are orchestrated end-to-end and information flows smoothly wherever necessary. 

With ITSM synchronization, you can achieve better coordination between different functions like incident management, change management, and the like, leading to smoother workflows and enhanced service delivery. 

Sales and Marketing Collaboration

Syncing customer data with marketing automation platforms ensures that sales teams have real-time insights into marketing campaigns and vice versa. Such an alignment improves lead nurturing, customer engagement, and overall conversion rates.  

E-commerce Integration

Integrating an online store with the inventory management system or with a payment gateway ensures products and their pricing are synchronized across all platforms. This can help prevent overselling and build customer loyalty through accurate product information. 

Despite having immense benefits, implementing a two-way sync has its own set of challenges. 

Ticket traceability and workflow orchestration

Challenges of Setting up a Two-way Sync

Two-sync comes with its own complexities that you must handle with care.

Ensuring data changes propagate accurately across systems without conflicts or discrepancies. 

Teams today have information that’s more distributed. For them, having the information they require within their own tool has immense benefits. 

Though a two-way sync can help them achieve this, if some unwanted data falls through the cracks, it can lead to broken workflows and processes. Sticking with sending only the required data and ensuring your sync security are the only pillars that’ll make your two-way synchronization strong and resilient.

Legacy systems are still very much a part of modern organizations as much as the latest cutting-edge technologies. Implementing a bidirectional sync between these diverse technology stacks is a challenge.

Despite all these challenges, if done properly, two-way sync can be a pleasant experience for your teams. With the right solution to implement it, think of increased team collaborations, reduced interdependency, and the data you need, in the tool you use the most. 

Exalate: A Customizable Synchronization Solution

Exalate is a one-way or two-way synchronization solution that offers integrations between Jira, Salesforce, Zendesk, ServiceNow, GitHub, etc. It offers a Groovy-based Script mode that basically uses low-code scripts to set up your synchronization the way you want. 

Exalate’s Script mode is also AI-enabled. Using AI Assist, you can simply enter your one-way or two-way sync requirements and your scripts are automatically generated. This feature takes into account your inputs, existing configuration, and Exalate’s scripting API to generate the scripts. As with any AI, it’s possible you might need to refine the scripts or your prompts. So, always review everything before publishing changes.

If you don’t enjoy setting up a sync yourself, you can always choose to offload it to us, and we’ll handle everything for you. 

You can always learn more about it through our docs and academy, or you can simply ask Aida your questions. If you still don’t have an answer, feel free to book a call with our sync experts to discuss your use case. 

Conclusion

In today’s world of specialized tools, keeping everyone on the same page is a challenge. Two-way synchronization offers a solution to ensure your data remains accurate and consistent across systems. By automating data sharing, teams can focus on strategic work rather than routine data entry. 

Whether it’s sales, support, or ITSM, two-way sync enhances collaboration, reduces errors, and empowers teams with real-time information. 

Despite its challenges, the right two-way sync solution can transform how your teams work together, making sure everyone has the data they need when they need it.

Recommended Reading:

The Future of Work: The Role of AI in Cross-company Integration

Exalate-AI-CCI-3990x2244

Traditional workplaces were characterized by physical offices, fixed working hours, and localized teams. 

Technology progressed and organizations became inclined towards digital transformation. Rigid hierarchical team structures became more dynamic and distributed. 

This digital age brought in a shift towards flexibility and connectivity, making the way for remote work environments.  

At the same time, businesses began to rely heavily on work management systems to handle daily activities, implement projects, and respond to customer needs. Teams using these systems, however, started becoming siloed.

As businesses become more specialized, these globally siloed teams using different systems wanted to find a way to collaborate effectively. They were also seeking the same efficiency levels they had in traditional workplaces without hampering team dynamics. 

Their focus was on finding an automatic mechanism for exchanging the required information everyone needed. 

Integration was an answer to this quest. 

This integration began by connecting teams within different departments. And then as the demand grew, companies realized they could extend the benefits of their internal integrations to their partnerships with other companies. 

Cross-company integration came into the picture! 

The Rise of Cross-company Integration

Cross-company integration (CCI) is connecting diverse systems across multiple companies. 

This concept isn’t merely about linking different systems but involves a comprehensive approach to connecting remote teams, establishing clear processes between them, and using technology to aid communication across organizational boundaries. 

It involves exchanging information based on the requirements of various stakeholders, ensuring tasks created in one system can be efficiently addressed in another.

Given the complexities and costs associated with building and maintaining CCI, many companies started to turn toward third-party integration providers. 

These vendors specialize in creating, configuring, maintaining, and scaling integrations, offering a more manageable and secure solution. 

Building a Worldwide Network of Connected Companies

Exalate started off as one such integration provider that allowed teams to connect with each other in a peer-to-peer fashion, meaning one entity connecting to a single other entity. 

Entity in this case can be a company, a department, two different teams, or the same team working on different projects. 

Within a few years, we saw a growth in companies wanting to connect to multiple other companies either establishing a one-to-many, many-to-one, or many-to-many relationship, while having the freedom to orchestrate their integration the way they want. Security was always a top priority. 

We realized the more the number of connections these companies form with their partners, suppliers, customers, or vendors, the more value their integration brings. 

It also enhances the trust, empathy, and transparency in their relationships forming a stronger and more ever-lasting bond.

Building upon this concept, we shaped the vision at Exalate. 

We aim to build a worldwide network of connected companies, where organizational boundaries blur and communication lines grow stronger. 

But there’s more to it than simply a vision. 

The Future of Work: Collaboration Beyond Boundaries

Cross-company integration built across a worldwide network aims to redefine the way work is meant to happen. 

It streamlines communication across organizations at the push of a button. 

It aims to align modern collaborations with modern integration demands like distributed, agile, loosely coupled, secure, and scalable integration. 

It allows companies to extend their workflows and collaborate efficiently with external teams, mirroring internal team dynamics. 

The future of work is driven by the need for efficiency, innovation, and the ability to respond swiftly to market changes. 

The integration market has changed significantly with low-code approaches, pre-built connectors for common applications, and templates for typical scenarios. 

The Artificial intelligence (AI) boom over the past few years is a force to drive this market even further by allowing people-focused values to be at the forefront. 

When integration is combined with the power of AI, it changes the equation at workplaces even further. 

The Role of AI in Cross-Company Integration

So what transformative role does AI play in facilitating cross-company integration? 

McKinsey reports that AI adoption is accelerating rapidly, with the potential to significantly impact global GDP. By 2030, approximately 70% of companies might adopt some form of AI technology, compared to about 33% today. The report also emphasizes the competitive advantage for early adopters, who could see substantial increases in productivity and profitability.

Traditionally, users set up their integrations with the help of technical resources or from the software vendors themselves. For easy-to-implement scenarios, they use predefined templates. However, for complex scenarios, a lot of back and forth is required to set up a working integration. 

AI-assisted integration makes this simpler. It converts natural language commands into low-code integration scripts or templates that you can directly apply to your connection.

Let’s delve into the specifics. 

AI can help cross-company integration in the following ways: 

  • Providing a means to gather explicit integration requirements from all the involved stakeholders
  • Crafting specified integrations between systems with simple or natural language user prompts
  • Ensuring the security of the integration is maintained based on the requirements of all companies
  • Identifying templates for use cases
  • Enabling a 360-degree view of how the integrated environment looks like
  • Coupling it with advanced monitoring, reporting, and analysis to ensure the integration is reaping the benefits envisioned initially
  • Giving cool insights on how integrations could evolve or scale 
  • Aiding self-starters via integration templates that can be reused to build DIY connections

Benefits of AI-based Integration 

AI-assisted integration offers numerous benefits, transforming how businesses handle data and processes. Here are some key advantages:

Improved Accuracy

AI minimizes human errors in integration. With machine learning algorithms, the system can learn from past mistakes and continuously improve, ensuring data integrity and reliability.

Scalability

AI-assisted integration can handle increasing amounts of data and complexity without requiring a proportional increase in resources. This scalability is important for growing businesses and those experiencing fluctuating data volumes.

Cost Reduction

Automation through AI reduces the need for extensive manual labor and the associated costs. Moreover, AI systems can operate 24/7, providing continuous integration services without additional labor costs.

Predictive Maintenance

AI can predict potential issues in the integration process before they occur, allowing proactive maintenance and reducing downtime. This predictive capability ensures smoother operations and minimizes disruptions.

Intelligent Insights

By analyzing integrated data, AI can uncover hidden patterns and insights that might be missed by human analysis. These insights can drive strategic decision-making and uncover new business opportunities.

Flexibility and Adaptability

AI systems can adapt to changes in business processes and data structures more quickly than traditional integration methods. This flexibility ensures that integrations remain relevant and effective even as business needs evolve.

Challenges in AI-assisted Integration

However, even though AI seems to be a lucrative proposal, it’s important to understand the challenges it brings along. 

  • Translating information between custom systems and developing a common language for seamless communication
  • Creating standards similar to HTTP
  • Gathering data and ensuring it’s accurate and consistent 
  • Ensuring clear and accurate information exchange paths 
  • Avoiding biased outcomes or AI hallucinations
  • Ensuring integration security 
  • Connecting and including legacy systems in AI endeavors

The transition to smart integration with AI technology is not easy. It includes rethinking your entire integration strategy and staying ahead in a competitive data-driven world. 

Conclusion: Shaping the Future Together

As workplaces evolve from traditional settings to dynamic, distributed teams, there is a need for flawless collaboration across company boundaries. 

The future of work is intertwined with AI-driven cross-company integration. AI simplifies integration by converting natural language commands into actionable scripts, improving accuracy, scalability, and cost efficiency. 

The benefits of AI-assisted integration are clear: smarter workflows, predictive maintenance, and insightful analytics. 

Incorporating AI in your integration effort not only optimizes operations but also sets the stage for a more connected and agile business workplace.

Recommended Reading:

Integration Security: Key Measures and Best Practices for Enterprises

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Integrations ensure daily operations across multiple business units and platforms are seamless and accurate. When such integrations are implemented between multiple enterprises, the complexity, criticality, and volume of the exchanged data increases. 

As businesses increasingly rely on integrations to drive efficiency and innovation, the importance of robust security measures cannot be overstated. 

One key indicator of a secure and reliable integration solution is having the right certifications and mechanisms in place. This article explores the significance of security in the context of integrations, focusing on enterprise-grade connections, and provides practical tips for customers when choosing integration solutions.

The Importance of Security in Enterprise Integrations

Any integration involves the exchange of sensitive data between different systems and applications. This data often includes confidential business information, customer records, and intellectual property, making security a top priority. The complexities of exchanging data while maintaining high-security levels multiply when multiple enterprises are involved. 

Here are several reasons why security is essential in enterprise integrations:

1. Protection of Sensitive Data: Security breaches can lead to the exposure of sensitive data, resulting in financial losses, reputational damage, and legal implications. It can permanently hamper relationships that take years to build. 

2. Compliance with Regulations: Many industries are subject to strict data protection regulations, such as GDPR, HIPAA, and CCPA. Secure integration solutions help organizations comply with these regulations, avoiding hefty fines and legal consequences. 

3. Maintaining Business Continuity: Security incidents can disrupt business operations, leading to downtime and loss of productivity. A secure integration solution ensures uninterrupted data flow and system availability, contributing to business continuity.

4. Building Customer Trust: Customers expect their data to be handled securely. Demonstrating a commitment to security through ISO certification and other measures can enhance customer trust and loyalty.

integration security

Key Security Considerations while Choosing Enterprise Integration Solutions

When evaluating integration solutions, enterprises should prioritize security. Here are some practical considerations to keep in mind:

1. ISO Certification: Look for solutions that are ISO 27001:2002 certified. This certification indicates that the provider adheres to high standards of information security management, offering reassurance that your data will be handled securely.

2. Data Encryption: Ensure that the integration solution uses strong encryption protocols for data in transit and at rest. Encryption protects data from unauthorized access and tampering.

3. Access Controls: Implement robust access control mechanisms to restrict access to sensitive data. Role-based access control (RBAC) and multi-factor authentication (MFA) are effective measures to enhance security.

4. Regular Security Audits: Choose providers that conduct regular security audits and vulnerability assessments. These audits help identify and address potential security risks proactively.

5. Incident Response Plan: Ensure that the provider has a well-defined incident response plan in place. This plan should outline the steps to be taken in the event of a security breach, minimizing the impact on your business.

Practical Examples of Secure Integration Solutions

To illustrate the importance of security in enterprise integrations, consider the following scenarios:

1. Financial Services: A bank uses an integration solution to connect its core banking system with third-party payment processors. Given the sensitivity of financial data, the bank prioritizes ISO-certified solutions that offer end-to-end encryption and robust access controls to protect customer information.

2. Healthcare: A healthcare provider integrates its electronic health record (EHR) system with a patient management platform. To comply with HIPAA regulations, the provider selects a solution that ensures data encryption, regular security audits, and strict access controls, safeguarding patient health information.

3. E-commerce: An online retailer integrates its inventory management system with various sales channels. To protect customer data and comply with GDPR, the retailer chooses an ISO-certified integration solution that offers comprehensive data protection measures and a reliable incident response plan.

As seen, there are many ways to connect multiple enterprises and teams securely. While these examples are not exhaustive, selecting the best integration solution for a specific business use case is important. 

How Exalate Maintains Integration Security 

At Exalate, we understand the critical importance of integration security, especially when implementing cross-company integrations. Our ISO certification underscores our commitment to maintaining the highest standards of information security management. 

Additionally, we implement various security measures, including encryption, access controls, and regular security audits.

Modern integration requirements demand a more agile and distributed approach to securing data.

Some key integration needs include

  • Top-level security
  • Real-time data integration
  • One-way or two-way sync 
  • Flexibility to implement advanced integrations
  • Scalability to add more integration connections 
  • Advanced automation capabilities. 

All of the above can be achieved only with the right integration solution, bringing business-focused activities to the forefront. 

You can drive your business forward with modern and secure enterprise-ready integration solutions like Exalate. Book a call and discover if we are the right solution for your integration needs. 

Practical Tips for Assessing the Security Aspects of an Integration Solution 

Drawing from the experiences of our internal security team, we present key lessons and practical tips they rely on to keep Exalate at the forefront of security.

  1. Continuous Commitment to Security: Making security an integral part of an integration product and obtaining ISO certification is not a one-time exercise but an ongoing journey requiring dedicated resources and efforts. Security is everyone’s responsibility, and involving all staff and management is crucial.
  2. Adaptability: It’s essential to tailor the Information Security Management System (ISMS) to fit the needs and structure of your company. This flexibility ensures that the ISMS is practical and effective.
  3. Comprehensive Involvement: An ISMS is more than a set of policies and procedures; it reflects your company’s commitment to security. It must involve people from all aspects of the organization, not just a small team.
  4. Detailed Planning and Governance: Setting up a correct governance structure, such as a GRC board and Security Team, is crucial. A clear project tracking system is also necessary due to the extensive documentation and checks required.
  5. Ongoing Awareness and Training: Awareness is key. Regular training, quizzes, and presentations on security practices and policies help embed security into daily activities and ensure everyone is informed and vigilant. 

Conclusion

In the world of enterprise-grade integrations, security is not optional—it’s a necessity. The right security measures serve as a key indicator of a provider’s commitment to security and quality, offering peace of mind that your data is in safe hands. 

By prioritizing security considerations such as encryption, ISO certification, access controls, and compliance with industry standards, businesses can protect their sensitive information and maintain customer trust. 

Recommended Reading:

Transforming Business Dynamics: The Power of Cross-Company Integration with Exalate

Cross-company integration

In today’s business environment, there’s an increasing reliance on work management systems for daily operations like project implementation, customer support, and more. 

This is a result of organizations demanding specialization in every business aspect, leading to a gamut of such systems. Teams using these best-in-class systems may not always operate within the same organization or location. And when they pull their shoulders under a joint business initiative, they need effective and streamlined collaborations. 

Thus, it’s vital to extend the efficiencies of a unified team and system to other collaborating teams through integration. 

This necessity gives rise to the concept of cross-company integration (CCI). 

Cross-company integration is connecting diverse systems across companies and finding common ground for information exchange. This information is exchanged based on the requirements of multiple stakeholders. 

Essentially, cross-company integration involves system integration, integrating people and processes along the way! 

Sometimes, the integration focuses on connecting internal teams within a single organization or belonging to the same legal entity. This is what we call a classic example of intra-company integration. 

Intra and cross-company integration both effectively help systems communicate and exchange information with one another, only the complexities of a CCI are different in nature. 

The Business Case for Cross-Company Integration

The necessity for cross-company integration has long been apparent. It’s driven by the desire of teams from various organizations to collaborate efficiently and employ task management systems for joint projects. 

However, the intricacies of cross-company integration render it a daunting challenge. 

Companies on this journey recognize that integration is just the beginning; the real test lies in its maintenance. They understand the importance of sustaining efficiency levels post-integration, which often entails going above and beyond initial efforts.

Cross-company integration (CCI) presents a compelling business case, yielding tangible benefits across various fronts. 

  • Firstly, it fosters substantial cost savings by automating processes and reducing redundancies, thereby optimizing resource allocation. 
  • Secondly, CCI enhances operational efficiency by connecting disparate systems and workflows, facilitating smoother data exchange, and accelerating decision-making processes. 
  • Moreover, it promotes enhanced collaboration among teams and stakeholders, breaking down silos and fostering a cohesive environment conducive to innovation and growth. 


By leveraging cross-company integration, businesses not only improve their bottom line but also position themselves competitively in a rapidly evolving market, where agility and collaboration are paramount for sustained success.

Exalate’s Visionary Approach to Cross-Company Integration

At Exalate, we recognize that cross-company integration is not a one-time setup but an ongoing investment. It’s not something you set up today and forget the next day. 

Exalate’s CEO Francis Martens, brings his own personality to cross-company integration. His journey from a product developer to a co-founder has shaped the visionary perspective of CCI and has become a pivotal force at Exalate. 

Our commitment to CCI extends beyond its implementation; it’s about incorporating and optimizing integration strategies to drive sustained growth. 

Thorough preparation is important for integration initiatives, including requirements gathering, ensuring it aligns with business strategy, and assessing the potential impact on existing processes. 

A well-implemented cross-company integration project harmonizes external collaborations with internal team dynamics, creating a cohesive operational environment that boosts productivity and fosters a culture of innovation and adaptability. 

Organizations considering CCI adoption should prioritize environments with high volumes of repetitive tasks within process-oriented frameworks. These environments offer fertile ground for integrating disparate entities and driving shared objectives forward. 

Real-World Examples of Cross-company Integration

Witnessing the potential of cross-company integration through real-world examples brings forth its tangible benefits. 

Francis has encountered a lot of success stories, showcasing how businesses have used CCI to integrate their operations with partners, suppliers, and clients, fostering a new paradigm of collaboration and efficiency. 

From multinational corporations to agile startups, these examples demonstrate how cross-company integration can help orchestrate workflows, enhance communication, and accelerate project delivery. 

For instance, WirelessCar, an innovative player in the field of connected digital services leverages CCI to streamline its collaboration with leading automotive brands. Similarly, one of Turkey’s biggest insurance company embraced CCI to promote real-time and seamless synchronization with its suppliers. Again, DPG Media uses CCI to consolidate workflows and teams while navigating hypergrowth. 

These success stories are living proof of how cross-company integration can evolve organizational agility, innovation, and sustainable growth.

Addressing Cross-company Integration Challenges

Despite the obvious advantages of cross-company integration, many companies struggle with its setup and upkeep, essentially due to its inherent complexity. 

Integration Set Up and Maintenance

For many companies, implementing and maintaining the integration is a tall order. 

In this context, the challenge is significant as businesses undergo constant changes every single day. Interpretations and approaches to handling tasks evolve, processes, or infrastructure changes. 

These factors directly impact the investment made in integration in addition to its maintenance. So, it’s important to define integration requirements early on, be involved in the planning, configure the requirements with changing needs, and actively monitor its usage. 

Operational Discrepancies

Often, companies that operate on numerous defined processes diverge significantly from what their processes indicate. 

If such companies want to integrate with other companies, they are forced to implement workflows they might not be following or deal with unforeseen events. 

Francis faced a situation where two companies, collaborating for seven years, discovered unexpected problems while setting up their integration. One specific issue was the lack of a clear definition for reopening a task they intended to exchange. Without an integrated process definition, confusion arose, and team responses varied. 

An integration in such a setup will only be practical if the processes are effectively followed, resulting in end-to-end process automation, and predictable results.  

Integration Security

Companies prioritize the security of their integration and with good reason. Cross-company integrations, in particular, involve high-level security requirements.

To address this challenge, it is advisable to minimize the exchange of information. Restricting data exchange independently at the endpoints of the integrating systems will ensure only the required data is shared. 

Also, if appropriate safety measures are in place, integration security can be effectively achieved. 

The Future of Collaboration

The current outlook on collaboration is evolving, driven by technological advances and growing interconnectedness. Cross-company integration emerges not merely as a solution but as a catalyst for cultivating a network of connected companies. 

Traditional paradigms are giving way to agile, interconnected networks, where companies integrate their operations, systems, and processes to achieve collective goals. 

The transformation towards a worldwide network of connected companies then becomes a reality, where organizations effortlessly collaborate with partners, suppliers, and clients, leveraging standardized protocols and shared infrastructure to drive efficiency and innovation. 

The advent of technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) further pushes this transformation through automated integration assistance, predictive analytics, and much more. 

Yet, when surrounded by this technological revolution, it’s important to ensure human-centric values remain at the forefront. Through these values, it’s possible to guide the ethical and equitable deployment of technology and make sure collaboration serves the greater good. 

As we navigate this future, it becomes essential to cultivate a culture of collaboration, set apart by trust, transparency, and empathy, where diverse perspectives are celebrated, and collective success is prioritized over individual gain.

Recommended Reading:

10 Most Valuable Integrationhub Alternatives Right Now

IntegrationHub Alternatives

ServiceNow is a versatile digital transformation platform widely used for its customization capabilities. This permeates to ServiceNow’s IntegrationHub which is a popular choice for businesses seeking to integrate ServiceNow and other work management systems like Jira, Salesforce, etc. 

As the demand for integration solutions like IntegrationHub grows, so does the need for finding alternatives that offer comparable features and flexibility. 

In this blog post, we’ll explore some ServiceNow IntegrationsHub alternatives to help you find the right fit for your business. 

However, before we dive into the details, let’s get a brief overview of what works and what doesn’t for IntegrationHub. 

Exploring the Appeal of ServiceNow IntegrationHub/ Why ServiceNow IntegrationHub Stands Out?

IntegrationHub allows you to execute third-party APIs as a part of a flow when a specific event occurs. An event can be as simple as a high-priority incident. It calls these integrations, spokes. These spokes are easy to configure, and allow you to perform various actions without the need to write code. For instance, you can use the Jira spoke to connect Jira with ServiceNow. 

ServiceNow’s IntegrationHub has around 180+ spokes that allow integrations with numerous apps like Slack, Microsoft Teams, GitHub, Miro, monday.com, etc.

integrationhub jira

Additionally, it has an eBonding spoke that connects two ServiceNow instances. This spoke doesn’t require a separate IntegrationHub subscription, it’s a part of the ServiceNow package. 

IntegrationHub Features 

  • As a part of the flow designer, you can build a flow that performs particular actions based on certain triggers. For instance, create a Jira issue when a ServiceNow incident of urgency = 1 is raised. 
  • Or create low-code custom integrations with Action Designer using REST or scripts. 

IntegrationHub needs a separate subscription and spokes come as a part of its subscription packages.

Despite its popularity and features that seem to suit most business needs, there are some situations where IntergationHub is not enough. 

integrationhub purposes

Does ServiceNow IntegrationHub Have Everything You Need?

IntegrationHub falls short because: 

  • With IntegrationHub, you need to perform numerous steps and actions to set up even a basic integration use case. 
  • It’s difficult to set up a fully functional, ongoing bi-directional integration using IntegrationHub. It’s primarily designed for simple outbound integrations. 
  • It’s not flexible to implement advanced integration use cases with IntegrationHub. The out-of-the-box capability is very limited. You can still use custom code development to implement an advanced sync, but the code could end up being lengthy and unmanageable. In this case, you have the responsibility to maintain its APIs and configuration. Support is also negligible. 
  • In order to create new IntegrationHub connectors, a request with the original vendor must be made.
  • It’s difficult to troubleshoot since error messages do not give additional context. 
  • Let’s face it, IntegrationHub is expensive. Spokes run horizontally between packages and you might need to upgrade to use a particular spoke or end up paying for spokes you might not even use. The pricing is limited by the number of transactions, which you can quickly run out of. 
  • It’s important to understand that ServiceNow is at the driving seat of any integration implemented via IntegrationHub. This affects the scalability of your integration. Controlling the integration only from a single side (ServiceNow) doesn’t always work for companies who need to set up a secure cross-company integration. Also, one side of your integration will always be ServiceNow. This can severely limit your business expansion ambitions. What if you want to connect different ITSM systems like JSM and Zendesk? You cannot use the default IntegrationHub spokes. 

In my experience, people looking at alternatives to IntegationHub often tend to lean towards low-code integration platforms. This can be the case, because, inherently ServiceNow users are technical and recognize the capabilities that simple code can offer to integrations.

Other important factors you can consider when researching IntegrationHub competitors include features, reviews, pricing, and automation levels. 

I have compiled an overall list of IntegrationHub alternatives, let’s have a look. 

IntegrationHub Alternatives

Boomi

Boomi is an integration platform as a service (iPaaS) that allows businesses to connect various systems, databases, and applications. It also provides API management capabilities and a centralized platform to connect cloud and on-premise applications without the need for complex coding or hardware. 

boomi integration

Boomi Platform Features

Some key Boomi features include:

  • ETL (Extract, Transform, and Load): Extract data from one system, transform it into the desired format, and load it into another system. 
  • Master Data Hub: Act as a master data hub for your entire business data.
  • B2B/ EDI Management: Replace current EDI tools to support trading partner communications and also define common standards.
  • API Management: Create and deploy custom APIs
  • Flow: Develop custom workflows to automate processes

Boomi Pros and Cons

According to reviews on G2, here’s what users have to say about Boomi.

Pros

  • Has a wide range of connectors
  • Scalable, reusable, and no-code
  • Support for real-time and batch integrations

Cons

  • Some complex transactions require coding
  • Performance concerns for high-volume integrations
  • Navigating support is challenging
  • Complex licensing model

Boomi Pricing

After a free trial of Boomi, you can choose between various plans: Professional, Pro Plus, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus. Contact the sales team to learn more about the plan prices. 

Exalate

Exalate is an integration solution that offers a simple code approach to set up advanced bi-directional syncs. Quite similar to IntegrationHub it comes equipped with a Groovy-based scripting engine that allows you to perform complex bonding logic. 

It is a fully decentralized solution and can be used on cloud, on-premise, or docker environments.

Its Integration as a Service offering helps you develop your integration from scratch and handles everything from queue to API management. 

exalate scripting

Exalate Features

Some key features of this platform are:

  • Decentralized integration architecture to keep autonomous control over your integration, especially helpful in cross-company integrations. Advanced sync queue management to ensure systems are loosely coupled and maintainable
  • It is ISO 27001:2002 certified
  • Integrated retry mechanism to handle downtimes and resume sync from the point of interruption
  • Flexibility through low-code scripts to implement basic to advanced use cases with minimal tweaks and hassles. AI Assist is also available to shorten the time spent searching for the relevant sync scripts or writing them from scratch
  • Granular platform-native triggers to set up advanced automation
  • Scalability to grow the integration with growing business requirements
  • AI configurator to implement integration scripts via natural language prompts 
  • Two offerings: Integration as a service and Integration for Solution Providers
  • AI-enabled documentation assistant – Aida to help answer all your Exalate queries

Exalate Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Rapid integration and granular control over information exchange 
  • It is flexible to practically implement every scenario and is not limited by interface. 
  • Many ready-to-use scripts handy in the documentation
  • Helps cut down repetitive work
  • Easy to start using. You can create the first version quickly and see the results 
  • AI-assisted integration is the perfect fit to implement even advanced use cases based on simple user inputs
  • Great support

Cons

  • Sometimes hard to read error logs with improved filtering
  • Notifications can be improved 
  • No filtering options in the Connections/ Triggers screen 

Exalate Pricing

Exalate has a 30-day free trial. After the trial ends, you can opt for the Forever Free plan that allows you to sync basic entities by setting triggers. However, you cannot configure the sync in this mode. To avail the full functionality of Exalate, use the Script mode (which is now AI-powered). 

It comes in three plans: Free, Premium, and Enterprise Plan. Contact the sales team for the pricing quote. 

Additionally, you can also outsource your integration project to Exalate. 

Mulesoft Anypoint Platform

Mulesoft Anypoint Platform is an integration platform that provides a suite of tools and services for building, managing, and scaling (Application Programming Interfaces) APIs and integrations between various applications, systems, and data sources. It supports both on-premise and cloud applications. 

mulesoft interface

Mulesoft Anypoint Platform Features 

Some key features and components of this platform are: 

  • API Manager: This includes a centralized API manager that allows organizations to design, deploy, manage, and monitor APIs. 
  • Anypoint Studio: It is a graphics design environment for building integration flows and APIs. 
  • DataWeave: Mulesoft’s transformation language, DataWeave, is used for transforming and mapping data between different formats and structures within integration flows. 
  • The Mule runtime engine is the runtime environment for deploying and executing integration applications built with the Anypoint Platform. It supports deployment on-premises, in the cloud, or in hybrid environments. 
  • Anypoint Exchange is a library of pre-built connectors, templates, and APIs that developers can use to speed up their integration development. 

Mulesoft Anypoint Pros and Cons

According to reviews on G2, here’s what users have to say about the Mulesoft Anypoint Platform. 

Pros:

  • The platform works as a one-stop solution for API management with an interactive UI.
  • Integration with multiple platforms and services. 
  • Good customer support, with differing service times based on the packages you purchase. 
  • Easy and no-code/low-code setup. 

Cons

  • Requires improvements in deployment strategy and access management. 
  • Higher licensing costs can be an issue for small businesses.
  • The pricing model is complex.
  • Support can be more responsive. 
  • Steep learning curve.  

Mulesoft AnyPoint Platform Pricing

The pricing options are Gold, Platinum, and Titanium. You can request for a quote.

Cleo Integration Cloud

Cleo Integration Cloud is a cloud-based integration platform that designs, builds, operates, and optimizes critical business processes. It offers a comprehensive suite of tools and services to integrate systems, applications, and data across cloud and on-premise environments.

cleo interface

Cleo Integration Cloud Features

  • Pre-built API and EDI integrations for faster partner onboarding. 
  • Proactive monitoring, insights, and alerts to eliminate errors and chargebacks. 
  • Automate and create end-to-end B2B integration flows to any ERP, work management system, or other applications through pre-built integration connectors.
  • Configurable dashboards and alerts to users for real-time insights into every B2B transaction. 

Cleo Integration Cloud Pros and Cons

According to reviews on G2, here’s what users have to say about Cleo Integration Cloud.

Pros

  • Flexible platform supporting multiple integrations. 
  • User-friendly. Implementing it is easy. 
  • You don’t need any other EDI tool. 
  • Ability to manage, track, and receive reports on activities.

Cons

  • Significant learning curve to build integrations.
  • Complex customization 
  • Support can improve. 
  • It can be clunky at times. 
  • Performance issues for high-volume transactions or when scaling across partners. 

Cleo Integration Cloud Pricing

You need to contact the sales team to get the pricing for Cleo Integration Cloud. 

Workato

Workato is an integration and automation platform that allows businesses to connect their various applications and automate workflows without the need for extensive coding or IT resources. It offers a range of features and capabilities designed to streamline business processes and improve efficiency.

workato interface

Workato Features

Some key Workato features are: 

  • Flexibility to publish APIs, build robust data integrations, create custom apps and bots, and work with event streams.
  • The Common Workato Runtime (CWR) for instant and near-unlimited scale eliminates operational costs and minimizes downtimes.
  • Build integrations and automations around recipes and triggers. Recipes are instructions to automate a workflow, whereas triggers are a set of conditions that prompt actions in real time or in batches. 

Workato Pros and Cons

Generally, users have to say the following about Workato.

Pros 

  • Intuitive UI and straightforward implementation
  • Good documentation and customer support
  • Recipe logic can scale from simple to complex
  • Extensive library of pre-built connectors

Cons

  • Some simple operations take a lot of manipulation
  • The platform can seem overwhelming for beginners
  • The pricing structure is complex 
  • Constraints when dealing with a large number of file uploads or processing 

Workato Pricing

You can contact the sales team to know the exact price for the Workato solution. 

Celigo

Celigo is an integration platform as a service that provides automation for business users and IT teams. It supports various pre-built connectors to connect SaaS applications, databases, and more. Users can package connectors, flows, business logic, and mappings into templates and publish them for use by other teams. 

celigo interface

Celigo Features

  • The breadth of integration patterns for drag and drop or advanced script injection
  • Use of AI to tackle time-consuming tasks and mine data across various sources. 

Celigo Pros and Cons

According to reviews on G2, here’s what users have to say about Celigo.

Pros 

  • User-friendly and intuitive interface 
  • Great customer support on various channels 
  • Good documentation and public support forums 

Cons

  • Error logs are not comprehensive 
  • Steep learning curve 
  • Lack of flexibility for advanced use cases with the pre-built connectors 

Celigo Pricing

Celigo’s pricing is based on the feature availability and comes in Free, Standard, Premium, and Enterprise Plans.

Jitterbit Harmony

Jitterbit Harmony is a low-code integration platform that allows you to connect systems, automate workflows, and create new apps to streamline business processes. 

jitterbit interface

Jitterbit Harmony Features

Some key features include: 

  • Cloud Studio: A low-code UI optimized for ease-of-use and ease-of-access
  • API manager: Create and publish developer-friendly APIs and perform API lifecycle  management tasks
  • Management console: Centralized management console to monitor your workflow integrations and processes
  • Pre-built integrations: Reusable, customizable, quick to implement integrations 

Jitterbit Harmony Pros and Cons

According to reviews on G2, here’s what users have to say about Jitterbit Harmony. 

Pros 

  • Ease of use
  • Good customer service
  • Number of pre-built connectors 

Cons

  • Lack of in-depth tutorials
  • Slows down with an inactive web page
  • Few training resources 
  • Unclear error messages
  • Rigid minimum requirements cannot let businesses scale and evolve 

Jitterbit Harmony Pricing

It has custom pricing options tied to your enterprise license agreement (ELA). The options are Standard, Professional, and Enterprise.

Zapier

Zapier is a workflow automation tool that supports numerous web applications and services. It supports a simple drag-and-drop interface. It combines user interfaces, data tables, and logic with 6000 + apps to build and automate work. 

zapier interface

Zapier Features 

  • Interfaces are used to design forms, web pages, and basic apps to power your business-critical workflows – no coding is required. 
  • Zaps are triggers and actions used to automate workflows 
  • Tables are used to store, edit, and move data with a database that’s purpose-built for automation

Zapier Pros and Cons

According to reviews on G2, here’s what users have to say about Zapier. 

Pros

  • Easy to implement with a variety of third-party apps like MailChimp, Gmail, etc. 
  • Great customer support available: 24/7, chatbot, email, etc.
  • Good automation to handle repetitive tasks 
  • Numerous supported apps 

Cons

  • Limited flexibility. Can handle simple to moderately complex chores 
  • Too high a price for the paid version
  • Regularly observe the zaps to see if they are running correctly and that there are no issues
  • It can be a little wonky and slow
  • High price compared to other similar companies 

Zapier Pricing

The pricing range for Zapier is: 

  • Free
  • Starter starts from $29.99 per month ($19.99 per month paid annually)
  • Professional starts from $73.50 per month ($49 per month paid annually)
  • Team starts from $103.50 per month ($69 per month paid annually)
  • Company (available on-demand)

Integrately

Integrately offers pre-built automations so you can activate them in a single click. You just have to select your automation, connect accounts and your automation is ready. It allows businesses to connect their application tools to automate processes. It positions itself as a Zapier alternative. 

integrately interface

Integrately Pros and Cons

According to reviews on G2, here’s what users have to say about Integrately. 

Pros 

  • Ability to integrate with numerous apps
  • Instant notifications when the integration breaks 
  • Great customer support 
  • Easy and intuitive platform

Cons

  • Limited flexibility 
  • Steep learning curve
  • The interface to set up complex integrations can be confusing 

Integrately Pricing

The pricing comes in different editions based on the features offered:

  • Free
  • Starter: $19.00/ month
  • Professional: $39.00/ month
  • Growth: $99.00/ month
  • Business: $239.00/ month

ONEiO

ONEiO is a cloud-based integration solution provider that specializes in integrating IT service management (ITSM) tools and processes. They offer a solution that streamlines incident management, problem management, and other ITSM functions. 

oneio interface

ONEiO Features

Some key ONEiO features include. 

  • No-code integration platform offering a non-traditional turnkey solution for complex integration needs
  • ONEiO is trained on context-specific integration logic to deliver full integrations
  • ONEAi is their in-house artificial intelligence model trained specifically for IT service integration

ONEiO Pros and Cons

According to reviews on G2, here’s what users have to say about ONEiO. 

Pros

  • Easy to use and implement 
  • The support team is responsive
  • Easy to analyze root causes for integration problems 

Cons

  • Some important features are missing like analysis and overview of singular rules 
  • No direct contract. Contract through partners only. 
  • No reporting available on integration performance 
  • Complex search for a specific error 

ONEiO Pricing

You can contact the sales team for a detailed price quote after the free trial. 

Final Verdict: Exalate as an IntegrationHub Alternative 

We have discussed a couple of tools in this blog post. 

If we boil all of this discussion down, the following are some major issues users face. 

  • Lack of flexibility to implement advanced/ complex integrations or things getting complicated during implementation
  • Steep learning curve to onboard new users 
  • The solutions come with a significant cost. They are either suitable for bigger enterprises or have complex pricing structures
  • Lack of good support
  • Lack of adequate technical training resources like documentation, tutorials, or public forums
  • Less scalability while adapting to new technologies, tools, or integration requirements 

Taking a comprehensive view and reaching a conclusion can be challenging due to the complexity of selecting an integration solution. It hinges on various factors including, but not restricted to, the integration use cases, budget constraints, security needs, and additional considerations.

Exalate can be a feasible ServiceNow IntegrationHub alternative: 

  • If you prefer the depth of an integration over its breadth. This is possible through its Groovy-based scripting engine that is natively designed to implement simple to advanced use cases without making stuff too complicated. You can sync any data available via REST, set custom mappings and robust triggers, and do much more with simple code. And now Exalate’s scripting engine is also powered by AI, making your integrations even better.
  • If you want to get onboard one step at a time by discussing your use case and receiving guided assistance throughout the journey. 
  • If you need a cost-effective solution that fits the budgeting constraints of even small businesses. 
  • If you are a self-starter and want to explore various technical resources before you need human support. For such individuals, Exalate provides robust documentation + Aida (your AI sidekick for docs), the Academy, the Exalate community, and much more. 
  • If you want to set up a secure intra or cross-company integration by retaining independent and full control over your side. This is possible via decentralized sync scripts that control incoming and outgoing data flow. 
  • If you desire scalability to be an important decision factor. With Exalate, it’s easy to add new integration nodes to your network and connect them in any way you want. Let your peer-to-peer integration grow into a network of connected systems. 

If you want to offload integration hassles to a third-party expert. Exalate’s Integration as a Service offering handles the A-Z of your integration, from concept to full-scale operations.

Recommended Reading:

The Role of Embedded Integration in Modern Work Environments

Embedded integration

Embedded integration originated due to the changing dynamics of the modern workplace. The need to enable integration capabilities within tools that teams use daily was felt like never before. 

In this article, I’ll discuss the genesis of embedded integration and its journey towards becoming the “go-to” integration paradigm. 

I’ll also discuss how embedded integration platforms make working with SaaS applications a breeze. And, finally, closing in on a few practical use cases. 

So, let’s turn our attention to understanding how it all started. 

Embedded Integration: The Inception

Thanks to the sudden burst of remote working, SaaS applications have increased manifold in the past few years. 

As teams started using their own SaaS applications, they unfortunately could not connect with other applications natively. 

So, companies resorted to copy-pasting data between these different systems, swiveling their chairs around (literally sometimes), toggling between applications, and not doing what they were supposed to do in the first place: be productive at work. 

Then, companies became smarter and realized that this approach didn’t work. They wanted effective, automated, accurate, and secure collaborations between their work applications. 

Enter integration!  

Interestingly, integrations are the third most important factor for buyers of SaaS apps. 

SaaS vendors acted quickly on this concept and started developing native ways to integrate commonly used tools. 

Using this way of native integration, these independent software vendors looked to increase their user base, reduce churn, and increase engagement. 

Born out of this thought process, embedded integrations provided a way to bring integrations directly within these applications. 

At the basic level, you can say embedded integration is a way of providing native integration within the app. 

Such integrations are implemented within a specific tool to reduce the need to toggle between unknown interfaces. 

So how can the integration function within the confines of the application? 

What is Embedded Integration?

Embedded integration is the process of using third-party apps or APIs within an application to connect with other applications or systems seamlessly. 

With an embedded integration, most of the integration capabilities function within the application’s interface.

Unlike traditional integration methods that often involve external middleware or connectors, embedded integration brings the power of connectivity directly into the application, enhancing user experience and reducing complexity. 

How Does Embedded Integration Work 

Embedded integrations rely on APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), webhooks, or other protocols to enable real-time data exchange between connected applications. 

The key is to make the integration process transparent to the end user, ensuring a smooth and uninterrupted experience. 

For instance, integrating your existing team’s workflow with another team’s unique workflow without anyone having to modify anything in their respective workflows. 

So, how do companies achieve continuous integration for embedded systems?

The Journey from Building Integrations to Embedded Integration Platforms

Data-heavy organizations with stringent security requirements or large enterprises with ample resources often choose to build integrations in-house. 

While this can be feasible for a few companies, it might not always be the best choice. 

Scalability, resource-intensiveness, and maintainability are just a few of the issues of building integrations on your own. 

Such enterprises then shift their focus towards system integrators who take care of their integration needs. Such third-party integration vendors are constantly evolving to make sure their integrations remain relevant in the modern landscape.  

Enterprises were just getting started with these third-party integration solutions when a new (a bit modified) member entered the party, iPaaS. 

Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) vendors offer centralized integration control, pre-built templates, active monitoring, and in-built security in their cloud integration offerings. 

Building on top of this iPaaS ecosystem are embedded integration platforms, sometimes called embedded iPaaS (Embedded Integration Platform as a Service). 

Though at the onset, the nuances between them are not clear, some evident distinct features make iPaaS different from embedded iPaaS.  

Difference between iPaaS and eIPaaS 

iPaaS works as a standalone integration platform that operates independently of specific applications. It provides a centralized environment for designing, deploying, and managing integrations between various systems. 

However, iPaaS comes with its caveats. 

With iPaaS, teams

  • spent valuable resources on training, 
  • used no-code templates that couldn’t handle complex scenarios, 
  • struggled with its heavy-weight nature,
  • dealt with expensive vendors. 

It is clear that iPaaS isn’t the right choice when it comes to offering a cohesive, native-like user experience, giving rise to embedded iPaaS. 

The Birth of Modern Embedded Integration Platforms

Embedded iPaaS tries to offer what the conventional iPaaS lacks. It successfully tweaks the conventional iPaaS offerings by embedding integrations right within tools, yet keeping all the benefits of traditional iPaaS intact. 

Around this time another important milestone hit the integration landscape: the rise of low-code tools.

These modern embedded integration platforms, or what we call low-code embedded integration platforms, offer advanced integration capabilities with the help of low-code scripts. They also provide a native integration experience. 

For example, integration platforms like Exalate use scripting languages such as Groovy to offer advanced integrations to end users. 

These platforms further improved user experience by allowing integrations to be controlled independently at their endpoints. 

Imagine, a complex integration built using low-code scripts that provide a native-integration-like feel in your application. It can help you make integration a fundamental aspect of your application itself. 

Your team can use embedded integration technology to connect their applications with those of their counterparts. 

Embedded Integration Platform Features 

Let’s have a look at some features of enterprise integration platforms. 

  • They can handle data operations such as pulling, pushing, routing, formatting, and transforming data between applications. 
  • Embedded integration software allows you to automate customized data flows across your company’s software product and your end customers’ applications.
  • They can also provide a centralized interface to view the health of your integration network so that you get the best overview of every aspect. 
  • They offer connectivity across diverse hybrid IT environments (combining on-premises and cloud solutions). 
  • Many embedded platforms are vendor-agnostic, which means they can connect with a wide range of applications, regardless of the vendors involved. This can reduce your dependency on a specific technology stack. 
  • They come with regular security updates and ongoing support. 
  • They offer rapid integration deployments, allowing businesses to adapt quickly to changing market conditions. 
  • Low-code embedded iPaaS offer flexibility for deep integrations along with no-code integration patterns for simple, recurring use cases.
  • They provide scalability, allowing businesses to scale their integration network as their needs evolve. 
  • They have a lot of pricing options, from pay-per-seat and pay-per-use to a flat price range. 
  • They have in-built security measures like token-based authentications, RBAC, end-to-end encryption, single-tenancy, etc. 

Some embedded integration vendors like Exalate offer the entire integration as a service, from concept to full-scale operation. 

With a flexible price, such third-party integration solutions can handle all the complexities for you, allowing you to focus on what matters the most – expanding your business. 

So, you’re halfway through making a decision but are still questioning if you need an embedded integration solution just yet. Read further. 

Who Needs Embedded Integration Platforms

Software Vendors

Independent software vendors who offer point solutions or platform solutions in any form, on-premise or SaaS, are probable candidates for an embedded integration platform. 

They can leverage such an integration to enhance the functionality of their applications, making them more attractive to potential customers. 

Legacy System Vendors

Companies are often stuck with legacy systems that can support modern systems. Using the right embedded systems integration can benefit vendors who want to rely on third-party expertise without the hassle associated with integrating legacy systems. 

Managed Service Providers (MSPs)

MSPs, acting in their capacity as service integrators, often have to focus on top-notch services for their customers. Ensuring a high level of service quality means having a way to seamlessly connect and manage diverse client systems and applications. 

Embedded software integration can help these SaaS MSPs dominate the technology landscape and provide a unified experience for their clients by integrating their SaaS applications with their customers.   

Additionally, managed security service providers (MSSPs) can connect with their customer applications in such a way that specific or targeted customer security requirements are met with the correct integration platform. 

Offload-integration-pain-to-experts Driven Companies 

And then there are companies that, from the beginning, understand integration challenges and look for ways to offload it to experts. They want reliable experts to get their integration rolling from concept to implementation. 

Such companies can benefit from a no-code/ low-code secure embedded integration system. 

So what do you choose at the end of the day? 

Well, embedding your integration is a matter of choice. There are still ways to bypass this condition and live with non-embedded, central UI-based integrations. It’s a choice you can make after reconsidering our discussion here and your basic integration needs. 

If it helps, you can also quickly look at a couple of use cases. 

Embedded Integration Use Cases

There are a lot of ways to implement embedded system integration. 

Workflow Orchestration

Teams using applications like Jira have stringent or unique workflows and they often prefer to continue working within their workflows. With an embedded system, you can easily create integrations tailored to their specific needs and preferences. 

Orchestrating workflows means syncing statuses, priorities, comments, assignees, custom fields, attachments, and more within their own Jira. This can increase team transparency, productivity, and visibility, paving the way for efficient collaboration. 

Real-time Data Exchange

Imagine a scenario where you have an embedded integration within a project management app. This app is linked to a real-time messaging platform such as Slack or Microsoft Teams. 

As your team members collaborate on different tasks and make updates within the project management app, the integration ensures that all changes are instantly communicated to the relevant stakeholders on the messaging platform. 

For instance, if a task status is updated, a notification is sent to the teams’ dedicated Slack channel, providing everyone with the latest information. 

ITSM Tools Integration 

ServiceNow, Jira Service Management, and Zendesk are popular ITSM tools. With the proper embedded integration in place, you can easily synchronize any data between them.

And you can view the synced data right within your own ITSM tool. You can also choose to filter data you wish to send and not receive data you don’t require. It’s as simple as clicking a button. 

Connecting your ITSM tools in this fashion can elevate your service levels and ensure your services are delivered on time, every time. 

One-way or Two-way Data Synchronization

There might be a requirement of syncing data only in a single direction. For instance, receiving status updates from the dev team working in GitHub in your Azure DevOps instance for testing purposes. 

Implementing such one-way or two-way integrations within your environment can help backend and frontend teams come together to achieve common goals. 

Moreover, an embedded integration can also mobilize data through in-depth, granular field mappings, establishing triggers based on platform-native query search syntaxes without the need for extensive coding skills. 

Wrap-up

Embedded integration has emerged as a solution to the challenges posed by the surge in remote work and the increasing reliance on SaaS applications. 

The article explored the mechanics of embedded integration, emphasizing its transparent operation within application interfaces and its ability to offer a native-like user experience. 

With features like versatility, scalability, and robust security measures, embedded integration platforms prove valuable for every embedded integration company, legacy system vendor, MSP, and company seeking reliable integration solutions. 

Recommended Reading:

How to Set up an End-to-End ServiceDesk Plus Jira Integration 

Service Desk Plus Jira Integration

If you’ve ever felt the overwhelming crunch of support tickets and dealt with project management chaos, you’re not alone. As someone who’s been in the trenches of IT support, I get the struggle. 

That’s why I’m excited to share my experience on ServiceDesk Plus Jira integration, which made my IT life a lot simpler. Imagine a world where you can manage incidents and track projects without shifting between applications and still get the desired data at your fingertips. 

In this blog post, we’ll discuss why you need a ServiceDesk Plus Jira integration and some practical insights and strategies I used to integrate ServiceDesk Plus and Jira.  

Why Integrate ServiceDesk Plus and Jira? 

ServiceDesk is a comprehensive IT service management (ITSM) solution designed to automate and streamline support and help desk operations. 

Developed by ManageEngine, it offers features like incident management, change management, problem management, etc. 

Jira, created by Atlassian, is a powerful project management and bug-tracking tool widely used in software development and other industries. Known for its flexibility, Jira enables teams to track, plan, and manage their work efficiently through customizable workflows, agile boards, and much more. 

Working with integration experts over a couple of years, I have noticed the following benefits of a ServiceDesk Plus Jira integration: 

  • With integrated systems, your organization can gain a holistic view of projects and service operations, leading to increased team transparency, better decision-making, and improved overall visibility. 
  • Integration facilitates real-time communication between your support and development teams, breaking down silos, enabling everyone to align with business goals. 
  • Integration enables information to flow swiftly and accurately between service requests and development tasks, leading to quicker incident resolution and a more responsive support system. This, in turn, increases your operational efficiency. 
  • Integrated systems work as a catalyst for enhanced customer satisfaction. As customer incidents move quickly and automatically through their lifecycle, teams experience a single source of truth within their tools. Think of streamlined help desk management.

Yet, we tech enthusiasts understand the hurdles associated with building an integration from the ground up. We know that constructing a ServiceDesk Plus-Jira integration isn’t always practical and budget-friendly for companies. 

Thankfully, many leading software vendors in the market acknowledge this challenge and provide robust support for integrating their systems with third-party apps. Likely so, there is a native way to integrate Jira and ServiceDesk Plus. 

Overview of Jira ServiceDesk Plus Integration Options 

Native Integration

The out-of-the-box or native functionality allows for a one-way synchronization between ServiceDesk Plus and Jira. Incidents coming into ServiceDesk Plus automatically trigger Jira work items with a specific issue type for the dev team to work on. 

I have frequently seen this use case where companies want their external customer-facing teams to exchange information with the internal dev team. 

You can also associate Jira work items with ServiceDesk Plus incidents or service requests. After that, you can track these linked requests and Jira issue updates in either application. 

So, what’s the hitch here?

The native functionality allows for one-way communication only. To establish an ongoing bi-directional sync, you require a bit more configuration. Enter third-party integration apps!

Why are they better? We’ll see. 

Third-party Apps for a Jira ServiceDesk Plus Integration

At this stage, I want to share my insights with you. They are based on my experience working with an EU-based MSP, let’s call it Orella Solutions Inc. They offer security monitoring and reporting services aimed at automating the transfer of tickets from Jira Cloud to their customers’ ITSM platforms. Among these platforms was ServiceDesk Plus. 

They were looking at third-party apps to integrate between their Jira cloud and their customers’ ServiceDesk Plus instances. While their diverse clientele used different ITSM platforms such as ServiceNow, TopDesk, and JSM, we’ll focus on detailing the Jira Cloud ServiceDesk integration in this segment, with similar approaches applied to the other integrations.

We’ll delve into the specifics of their use case in a while. In the meantime, let’s explore the process that led them to select their integration tool.

They tried a couple of integration solutions. One of them was Exalate. Exalate offers uni or bi-directional continuous, real-time, robust integration between multiple platforms like Jira, Salesforce, Zendesk, ServiceNow, ServiceDesk Plus, Freshdesk, etc. 

They wanted to set up their integration faster and be offloaded to an integration service provider for a better and enhanced service experience. Over time, I have seen customers asking for integration tools that offer scalability and customization to a granular level without having to work on either of them. 

This was one of the reasons for choosing Exalate. 

Let’s look at a few other reasons. 

  • Exalate offers natural scalability for enterprises looking to connect with multiple partners, vendors, customers, or suppliers. A point-to-point connection you have with a single partner can easily scale up to multiple point-to-point networks. 
  • Its integration as a service offering allows users to customize plans and services based on specific requirements. The result is an integration implemented end-to-end. 
  • It is ISO 27001:2002 certified.
  • Exalate is capable of connecting to diverse company networks. To elaborate, Exalate for peer-to-peer integration connects one application to a single other application, such as integrating Jira and Salesforce. Exalate for MSPs connects a single central instance (company) with multiple other internal or external customers, each one using different applications.
  • It offers single-tenancy, distributed architecture, JWT-based authentication, and much more, so your integration will always behave as expected. This is especially true in light of cross-company integrations, where integration security is as important as integrating the systems in the first place.

It’s time we discussed their use case and shared the obstacles they faced and the ways we adopted to tackle them. 

ServiceDesk Plus Jira Integration Use Case

A brief flashback: We’re discussing an MSP (let’s refer to them as Orella Solutions) use case where they wanted to integrate their dev app (Jira Cloud) with their customer applications, one of which was ServiceDesk Plus. 

Whenever Orella sought to integrate with their customer apps, they encountered challenges dealing with diverse data formats, deployment models, and varied workflows. The manual data exchange through chats, emails, or phone calls became frustrating. Additionally, keeping track of incidents using their MSP portal posed increasing difficulties.

Handling scalability became a concern as new customers entered the scene.

They grappled with operational inefficiencies and customer retention challenges, reaching a point of no return. 

They got in touch with our support team around this time. I listened patiently to their struggles, and after a few email exchanges, I assured them that we would handle their integration end-to-end. This included configuring their connections with low-code scripting functions, embedding advanced logic into their sync flows, transforming data from one format to another, and even orchestrating end-to-end business workflows. 

Then we began the process of collecting their integration specifications.

The requirements were outlined as follows: 

  • Establish a straightforward incident sync with basic field mappings covering summaries, descriptions, comments, attachments, and labels.
  • Ensure status mapping at both ends, keeping both Orella and their customers well-informed about the incident’s current position in the workflow. The synchronization ceased when both parties closed the ticket. 
  • Uphold the confidentiality of private conversations, preventing internal comments from being externally visible. 
  • Synchronize historical data as part of the integration process. 
Sync rules Exalate

The trigger for automatic information exchange from Jira to ServiceDesk Plus was based on the following conditions: 

project = ITSM AND issueType = “incident” AND category = “MDR” and status = “Waiting for customer”

Triggers in Exalate

We got to the task at hand. 

Exalate is a competitive advantage for us as an MSSP since it enables us to have a close and smooth collaboration with our customers and find workarounds for bottlenecks. That is something both sides appreciate a lot because we are not merely another partner to our customers, but are in fact an extension of their team. And that is NVISO’s strategic vision as a managed security services provider.

– ALEXANDER SINNO
NVISO

How to Implement a ServiceDesk Plus Jira Integration? 

We took the following steps to implement Orella’s ServiceDesk Plus Jira integration: 

  • Gather the use case requirements. 
  • Install Exalate on ServiceDesk Plus and Jira. You can install it for Jira from the Atlassian marketplace. For ServiceDesk Plus, start from the integrations page.
  • Create a connection between ServiceDesk Plus and Jira. A connection works as a secure channel of information exchange between the two Exalate nodes on Jira and ServiceDesk Plus. We created numerous connections for their different projects. 
  • Adjust the sync rules to map the data fields between the two applications. The Rules tab within the Exalate console handles this mapping. Each side has an independent outgoing and incoming sync. The outgoing sync decides what information is sent to the destination, whereas the incoming sync decides how to interpret information coming from the destination. So, the outgoing sync from Orella’s Jira instance was mapped to the incoming sync of their customer’s ServiceDesk Plus instance.
  • Configure triggers for automatic information exchange. We already know the conditions for transferring information from Jira to ServiceDesk Plus. It was a unidirectional sync. I created the triggers in the platform-native query language (JQL for Jira). You can create multiple triggers with granular control on both sides independently.
  • That’s it! After setting the sync rules and triggers, synchronization happened automatically. 

ServiceDesk Plus Jira Integration: an Advanced Use Case

In this video, we demonstrate a real-time, bidirectional integration between ServiceDesk Plus and Jira, ensuring seamless issue synchronization between both platforms. Some Jira tickets are automatically synced to ServiceDesk Plus as Requests.

Here’s the use case we cover in this video:

  • A ticket is created in the Jira Cloud instance.
  • A trigger ensures that Jira work items with a custom field Mood = angry are synced to ServiceDesk Plus as Requests.
  • The ServiceDesk Plus Request number and URL are automatically added as custom fields in Jira for better visibility.
  • When a ServiceDesk Plus agent assigns the ticket to a Technician or updates fields like Reporter, Group, or Site, these changes sync back to Jira.
  • Additional fields like Category and Subcategory from ServiceDesk Plus are also mirrored in Jira.
  • Only public comments are shared between the two platforms, keeping the necessary context intact.
  • Status updates sync in both directions for real-time tracking.
  • Attachments are transferred to maintain full context.

By keeping both systems in sync, no ticket slips through the cracks, and teams stay updated in real time within their preferred platform.

The Post Narrative

We still configure new integration requirements, provide ongoing support, offer enhanced services, and handle any other issues with Orella when required.

The Exalate for MSPs plan enabled Orella Solutions to act as a central hub through which data flowed unidirectionally toward the endpoints, namely their customers. 

Output in SDPlus

They could successfully integrate with their customers and sync data automatically and accurately based on their requirements.

Having this integration in place helped them provide faster reporting to their customers as they were better informed and were able to take action faster. 

Exalate’s integration-as-a-service offering further boosted Orella’s scalability, and adding additional customers to their network was just a phone call away. 

ServiceDesk Plus Jira Integration Scenarios Implemented Using Exalate

I have seen a lot of different implementations for connecting Jira and ServiceDesk Plus. A few that stand out are:

Scenario 1:

The customer’s support portal was external and needed to be synced with the internal Jira project. They wanted to sync only specific fields from ServiceDesk Plus to Jira.

  • Only some tickets are passed from ServiceDesk Plus to Jira based on some status changes.
  • When the status changes on ServiceDesk, create a Jira ticket.
  • When the ServiceDesk Plus Jira status changes, change the Jira status and vice versa.
  • The ticket owner from ServiceDesk Plus gets synced. Jira Assignee also gets synced.
  • Comments, due dates, and issue types, like Task in ServiceDesk Plus, should be either related to operations or development in Jira.
  • Parent work item link from Jira should get synced. Maintain the parent-child link.
  • When a specific site is populated in ServiceDesk Plus, it needs to go to a specific Jira project.

Scenario 2:

The helpdesk team uses ServiceDesk Plus to manage Level 1 support for customer requests. If a request requires escalation to another team responsible for Level 2 support, the ticket will be transferred to Jira Service Management (JSM), which is used by the Level 2 team.

When Level 1 escalates a ticket, it is expected that the ticket will automatically convert into a JSM ticket, maintaining real-time synchronization between both systems. Any updates made by the customer, such as responding via email to ServiceDesk Plus, should also reflect in JSM. Similarly, updates or status changes made by the technical team in JSM should synchronize back to ServiceDesk Plus.

Conclusion

Integrating Jira and ServiceDesk Plus can significantly enhance your organization’s efficiency, transparency, and customer satisfaction. The native integration provides a foundation, but for a more dynamic and customizable solution, third-party apps like Exalate offer unparalleled advantages. 

In the ever-evolving landscape of IT service management, a robust integration solution is not just a convenience; it’s a strategic necessity. Consider talking to our experts if you want a transformative impact on your MSP operations. 

Recommended Reads:

Integration Software as a Service (iSaaS): An Answer to Modern Integration Challenges

integration software as a service

Enterprises are transforming the way they work, favoring modern cloud-based solutions over traditional on-premise counterparts. This shift fuels digital transformation, prompting them to look into diverse ways to integrate everyday systems. The outcome? The birth of Integration Software as a Service (iSaaS).

iSaaS welcomes this change by provisioning cloud-based solutions to integration problems. With pre-built connectors and a pay-as-you-go model, iSaaS solutions can redefine how you handle your integrations. 

In this blog post, we delve into the intricacies of iSaaS, exploring its practical applications and future trajectories. We’ll also navigate through some prominent iSaaS vendors, accompanied by best practices, to get the most out of your iSaaS effort. 

linking isaas services

What is iSaaS?

Integration Software as a Service (iSaaS) is a cloud-based solution that makes it easy for software applications to share and exchange data without any hiccups. 

Imagine your business uses software for various tasks – one for sales, one for customer management, and one for development. Without integration, these systems operate in silos, leading to inefficiencies and data discrepancies. 

iSaaS steps in to bridge this gap by connecting all these pieces together, allowing them to communicate effectively. 

For example, when a new critical customer ticket comes in an ITSM tool like ServiceNow, iSaaS ensures that the development team is updated on the incident in their system, Jira. Such automation between workflows ensures every team member is aware of what’s cooking in kitchens that matters to them. 

iSaaS providers offer cloud-based solutions to facilitate communication between systems that lack inherent communication capabilities. 

In contrast to the traditional on-premise integration solutions, iSaaS exhibits the following characteristics. 

Key Features of iSaaS

Cloud-Based Architecture

Unlike on-premise solutions, iSaaS leverages the power of the cloud. This means that the infrastructure supporting the integration process is hosted and managed by third-party cloud providers. 

Scalability

iSaaS provides businesses the capability to scale their integration processes effectively. Imagine your business growing, and with iSaaS, imagine your integration capabilities growing proportionally.

In such a case, adding new applications or ITSM tools to integrate becomes a walk in the park. 

Flexibility

The flexibility that iSaaS offers allows organizations to adapt to changing business needs swiftly. Whether integrating new tools, adapting new workflows, or evolving integration needs, iSaaS embraces all these changes without requiring significant reconfiguration. 

Other things to consider when thinking about flexibility include AI-powered assistants for suggesting mappings and permutations between different systems. This feature could speed up the configuration and optimization of existing connections.

Cost-Effectiveness

Embracing a pay-as-you-go model, iSaaS significantly reduces upfront costs and overall ownership expenses.

This makes it appealing, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) seeking cost-effective integration solutions. 

Plug-and-Play Connectors

One of the hallmarks of iSaaS is the provision of plug-and-play connectors. The connectors provide automatic bridges, aka integrations between popular software applications. This out-of-the-box functionality enables a quick and easy setup without the need for extensive coding.

For example, an iSaaS solution may provide a ready-to-use connector for Salesforce, connecting it with other tools like Jira, ServiceNow, etc. 

The integration landscape is constantly evolving, and so are integration solution providers. With time these providers introduce newer ways of handling integrations, often leaving consumers confused with too many choices. 

You might have heard of one such term – Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS). Which brings us to our next question. How does iPaaS and iSaaS differ? Let’s answer this now. 

What is the Difference between iPaaS and iSaaS? 

iPaaS functions as a cloud-based integration platform that facilitates an adaptive integration approach. In simpler terms, it serves as a platform for creating and deploying integrations within cloud applications and between the cloud and on-premises applications. 

Conversely, iSaaS operates as a cloud-based application that empowers users to create new integration flows by configuring them rather than starting from scratch. 

In essence, both iPaaS and iSaaS are cloud-based and offer certain similar capabilities. 

  • SaaS application connectors. For instance, Salesforce, ServiceNow, etc.  
  • On-premise application connectors. For instance, Azure DevOps Server.  
  • Granular data transformation and mapping capabilities
  • Pre-built integration operations and templates 
  • Multiple licensing models 
  • Other integration capabilities

Considering their overlapping nature, implementing one out of the two completely depends on organizational requirements and resource availability. 

For developers, who can dedicate time to writing and building their integration code, iPaaS is as simple as changing a URL. For no-code lovers, iSaaS is the way forward. Still, many iSaaS vendors offer a low-code approach in addition to pre-built templates which makes them a coveted choice. 

integrating systems

Now that we’ve grasped the essence of Integration Software as a Service (iSaaS), let’s delve into some real-world applications. 

How does this digital glue manifest its utility in various business scenarios? 

Applications of iSaaS

Consolidating Services in an MSP Setup

Managed Service Providers (MSPs) have conflicting systems with their customers. Often, these MSPs need to exchange information with their customers without manual mediation. 

Moreover, they all have unique workflows, adding to their communication woes. With an iSaaS in place, these systems can communicate effectively, through an MSP integration, feeding each other’s workflows with only the required information. Everything is automatic and in real-time. Efficiency at its best! 

Connecting Backend and Frontend Teams

Consider a software development project resting in Jira and customer tickets flowing into Zendesk. 

Critical customer tickets might need the dev team’s attention. Manually passing them won’t make the cut. iSaaS will ensure the required ticket information is passed to Jira. Additionally, statuses between the two systems will be up-to-date, so the support agent always has the answer to customer questions. 

Sometimes, multiple tickets need to be mapped to a single dev issue since it might be the same problem. iSaaS can handle all this gracefully. 

Optimizing CRM and Marketing Operations

Sales and marketing might use tools like Salesforce and HubSpot. Using iSaaS to integrate these tools means having a 360-degree view of customer interactions and experiences. An integration ensures customer data is visible to all the relevant applications. 

For instance, when a sales team member updates some customer information, it is uniformly reflected in any connected systems. 

While iSaaS brings in a plethora of advantages, it’s essential to navigate through the potential challenges that you may encounter in your integration journey. 

Challenges and Considerations in Integration Software as a Service

Data Security 

As data travels between multiple systems, it must remain safe and secure. iSaaS platforms address these concerns using various security measures like encryption, authentication, etc. 

However, it’s crucial to be watchful and alert while choosing an iSaaS provider, ensuring they check all your security requirements. Get a thorough overview of their security protocols and techniques.

For instance, some iSaaS tools provide additional security mechanisms like single-tenancy. 

Customization Requirements 

Every business operates uniquely with distinct processes and requirements. iSaaS solutions offer pre-defined connectors for popular applications, but you might require customization for special needs. While iSaaS aims for simplicity, businesses should evaluate the level of customization the platform allows and ensure it aligns with their individual requirements. 

Integration with Legacy Systems

Many businesses still rely on legacy systems not inherently meant to integrate with modern cloud-based solutions. iSaaS bridges this gap. However, challenges may arise in adapting older technologies to the integration process.

You need to carefully plan and strategize the process of integrating your legacy systems to ensure a smooth transition. 

Best Practices for iSaaS Implementation

To overcome these challenges, you can choose to follow certain best practices. 

  • Monitoring and Governance: Though iSaaS offers top-notch monitoring capabilities, your business must establish proper governance practices to complement it. Without careful oversight, integration processes may lead to undesired consequences like system overloads. 
  • Cost Management: While iSaaS is generally cost-effective, businesses need to carefully manage costs, especially as the integration scales. The pay-as-you-go model can become expensive if not monitored closely. Consider monitoring your usage, optimizing pricing plans, and regularly assessing the ROI. 
  • User Training and Adoption: Introducing iSaaS into your workflows requires user training and adoption. The simplicity of iSaaS is a strength, but users must still understand how to leverage its features effectively. 

While you embark on your journey to leverage Integration Software as a Service, it’s crucial to explore the landscape of major iSaaS providers in the market. 

Leading iSaaS Providers 

Let’s take a closer look at the key players. 

1. MuleSoft

MuleSoft, a Salesforce company, is renowned for its Anypoint Platform, offering a comprehensive solution for application programming interface (API) management and integration. MuleSoft’s platform provides a unified integration approach, enabling businesses to connect applications, data, and devices seamlessly.

2. Dell Boomi

Dell Boomi stands out for its cloud-based integration platform that empowers businesses to connect applications and data across various environments. Known for its simplicity and flexibility, Dell Boomi offers a visual interface for designing integration processes, making it accessible to both technical and non-technical users.

3. Exalate

Exalate is a standout iSaaS provider specializing in ongoing and robust bidirectional synchronization. Recognized for its ability to connect various tools such as Jira, ServiceNow, GitHub, etc., Exalate facilitates seamless collaboration between different platforms. 

exalate

The future of Integration Software as a Service (iSaaS) holds exciting possibilities as its landscape continues to evolve. 

Exalate embraces the future through AI Assist, an AI-enabled chatbot and scripting assistant that allows users to use natural language prompts to generate scripts and mappings for entities and fields within work management systems.

4. Informatica 

Informatica is a leader in cloud data integration and provides a versatile iSaaS solution. The Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services platform allows businesses to integrate data across cloud and on-premises environments, supporting a wide range of use cases from data migration to real-time data synchronization.

Future Trends in iSaaS

Key trends shaping the future of iSaaS are as follows. 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in Integration

iSaaS platforms are incorporating AI and ML to enhance automation, data mapping, and predictive analytics. This trend further enhances the integration process, making it more adaptive and responsive to evolving business needs. 

Evolution of No-code/ Low-code iSaaS Platforms

Even while the essence of iSaaS is to provide pre-built integration patterns, what makes them lucrative is their ability to offer a low-code approach to integrations. These low-code scripts/snippets further enhance your experience with granular control over your integration use case and configure it easily to even your most complex needs. 

Advancements in Integration Delivery and Approach 

For a truly remote and distributed world, integrations can no longer remain static. They need to be distributed, agile, and flexible enough to connect companies crossing geographical boundaries. iSaaS platforms like Exalate offer single-tenancy, decentralized integration, and low-code modes to align with modern integration requirements. 

By staying attuned to these future trends, you can strategically position yourself to harness the full potential of iSaaS. 

Conclusion

Integration Software as a Service (iSaaS) reshapes how businesses connect, automate, and thrive in the digital realm. It offers a streamlined path to unified data exchange. As businesses prioritize scalability and cost-effectiveness, the right iSaaS provider becomes a strategic ally, bringing low-code customization alongwith plug-and-play simplicity and AI-driven insights. 

Frequently Asked Questions

What sets Integration Software as a Service (iSaaS) apart from traditional integration solutions?

iSaaS distinguishes itself from traditional integration solutions by operating in the cloud, offering scalability, flexibility, and accessibility. Unlike traditional on-premises solutions, iSaaS facilitates seamless data exchange between diverse applications through plug-and-play connectors. This cloud-based approach enhances efficiency and reduces upfront costs, making it an ideal choice for businesses seeking modern, scalable integration solutions.

How do iSaaS providers ensure the security of data during integration processes?

iSaaS providers prioritize data security through robust encryption, authentication, and authorization protocols. Reputable iSaaS platforms guarantee secure integration and adhere to industry compliance standards, instilling confidence in businesses while meeting regulatory requirements. Some iSaaS providers like Exalate also have additional security features like single-tenancy, decentralized integration, etc.

What role does Integration Software as a Service play in the future of business operations?

iSaaS is poised for a transformative role, integrating Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for automated processes. As businesses embrace the Internet of Things, iSaaS becomes a key enabler, connecting devices seamlessly. Evolution in integration standards ensures a future-ready, interoperable digital dialogue for agile business ecosystems.

Recommended Reading:

Point-to-Point Integration: Explore the Strengths and Pitfalls

point-to-point integration

Integration challenges exist as a barrier to digital transformation, and organizations have started acknowledging these obstacles. Against this backdrop, adopting point-to-point integration becomes increasingly relevant, offering an efficient solution to address integration complexities. 

Furthermore, industry-specific requirements, such as interoperability in healthcare, underscore the demand for customized point-to-point integration.

From understanding the core concepts to exploring real-world applications, we’ll discuss the simplicity, benefits, and unique features that make point-to-point integration a pivotal element in your integration scenario.

What is Point-to-Point Integration?

Point-to-point integration (also called peer-to-peer integration,  or P2P integration) is the process of connecting two separate software applications or systems directly to exchange data and communicate without intermediaries.

It typically involves a one-to-one connection between two endpoints. In the technology domain, these “endpoints” are usually software applications, databases, or even hardware devices. 

Unlike the more centralized approaches like hub-and-spoke or middleware-based integration, P2P integration creates a direct connection between individual systems. 

At its core, point-to-point integration involves creating a dedicated link between specific systems to exchange data tailored to their unique requirements. If you want to connect three systems, you need to create three separate connections – one for each pair. You must ensure that each connection transfers only the specific data you wish to exchange.

erp to hrms

Let’s take a look at how point-to-point integration works in practice. 

Understanding the Functionality of Point-to-Point Integration

Every direct connection between two systems functions in a unique manner. It’s important to keep in mind certain things while dealing with these connections. 

Establish a One-on-one Connection 

To make point-to-point integration work, developers often use the connecting system’s APIs or write a custom program from scratch. Once the systems are connected, data can flow freely and securely between them. So, there is no need for intermediaries or other detours. 

The one-on-one connection approach reduces the complexity associated with routing data through a central hub, which is a common practice in other integration approaches. 

Data Transformation and Mapping

The systems you want to connect use different data formats, data structures, and protocols. To ensure things work smoothly while connecting them, it’s necessary to transform and map this data appropriately.

It might involve converting data from one format to another, aligning data structures, and handling any necessary translations. This step ensures that data sent from one system is correctly understood and processed by the other system. 

For example, if one system uses the “DD/MM/YYYY” date format, while the other expects “YYYY-MM-DD”, the point-to-point integration approach must convert the data in the proper format to ensure compatibility. 

Message Routing and Queueing 

Sometimes, point-to-point integrations involve putting messages in queues to manage the data flow. These messages are inserted in a queue when dispatched from a sender. They are accepted based on the queue order at the receiving end. 

You can thus ensure the correct order of message delivery and prevent any data loss through this queuing mechanism. 

Security Considerations

As with any other integration, security must be your primary focus while dealing with P2P integrations. Think about robust security measures like encryption, authentication, authorization, etc. 

At this point, let’s touch base on how the point-to-point integration approach differs from other centralized approaches we have been talking about, Hub-and-Spoke model and Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) architectures. 

Distinguishing Point-to-Point Integration from Centralized Approaches

Hub and Spoke Model

In a hub-and-spoke model, a central hub serves as a mediator or intermediary between multiple endpoints. All systems connect to the hub. The hub is responsible for routing and data transformation. They are highly scalable and are a perfect fit for large enterprises with diverse integration requirements. 

integration broker diagram

However, they can be complex to set up and maintain because of the central hub’s role in managing communication. 

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

ESB acts as a centralized message broker that handles communication between various systems. It offers features like message queuing, transformation, and routing. It supports complex routing and transformation scenarios. However, implementing and maintaining ESBs can be daunting and hence they aren’t suitable for simple integration needs. 

message broker

What sets point-to-point integration apart is its simplicity and directness. An organic evolution of a point-to-point connection can be a meshed integration.

In this kind of network, any system can connect with any other system based on specific requirements. Multiple point-to-point connections can lead to a mesh of connecting systems. Here, each link is responsible for handling communication between two systems.  

multi point to point

Though point-to-point integration can seem simple at the onset, it is also quite versatile and can be particularly useful in certain situations. 

When is Point-to-Point Integration the Right Choice?

To help you understand when to opt for point-to-point integration, let’s explore some common scenarios where this approach shines. 

Limited and Specific Integration Needs

When you have relatively simple integration needs involving only a few applications, point-to-point integration is an excellent choice. For small and medium-sized businesses with straightforward needs, this approach can be both efficient and cost-effective. 

Quick or Temporary Workarounds

In situations where you need a rapid integration solution for a short-term project or temporary data exchange needs, point-to-point integration offers a nimble approach. After all, setting up direct connections between endpoints is quicker than configuring a complex integration architecture.

Once your project is complete, you can easily dismantle the point-to-point connections without disrupting the existing infrastructure. 

Legacy System Integrations

Many companies still rely on legacy systems that lack modern integration capabilities. A point-to-point integration can help you connect your legacy systems to newer applications. You can thus include them in your modern workflows and data exchange requirements without needing a complete system overhaul. 

High-Performance Requirements

Point-to-point integration is the perfect candidate for speedy and low-latency integrations. Direct links between your systems can help you avoid network hops and potential bottlenecks arising from more complex integration architectures.

This can be crucial for real-time data processing needs like financial transactions or industrial control systems where delays are not acceptable. 

Compliance and Security Requirements

Certain industries like healthcare and finance have stringent regulatory data security and privacy requirements. Integrating your systems with a P2P connection will allow you to implement precise security measures and compliance controls directly with the involved systems. 

Now that we have explored how P2P integrations work and where we can use them, let’s delve into the array of benefits that this integration brings to the table. 

Benefits of Point-to-Point Integration Integration

While it may not always be a “one-size-fits-all” solution, point-to-point integration offers various benefits when used in the right situation. 

  • Since there is no need for additional intermediaries or complex middleware, P2P integration offers rapid data exchange between systems. This contributes to increasing operational efficiency. 
  • Its simplicity often makes it a preferred solution. 
  • With fewer parties involved, point-to-point solutions are often easier to set up and maintain. 
  • Since point-to-point integration doesn’t involve large middleware infrastructures, they have lower setup costs. This is especially advantageous for smaller businesses with limited budgets. 

Point-to-point integration has a lot of advantages, but it is not without challenges. 

Point-to-Point Integration Challenges

Before diving headfirst into this integration approach let’s explore some potential challenges and factors to keep in mind. 

  • Complexity Over Time (Scalability Issues):  As your organization grows, you will add newer applications. These applications would again need to be connected with each other. Two application connections can soon increase to twenty. Maintaining and managing these connections, and ensuring they work fine can be challenging. Such growing integrations can also lead to a spaghetti mess. 
  • Monitoring Complexity: Monitoring the health and performance of multiple direct connections can be more demanding than overseeing a centralized integration platform. 
  • Vendor Lock-in: Point-to-point integrations can involve vendor-specific protocols and APIs. This can lead to vendor lock-in, where switching platforms or vendors without major disruptions becomes challenging. Also, as vendors update their systems, it becomes challenging to ensure compatibility and stay up to date with vendor changes. 
  • Diverse Technologies: Point-to-point connections can involve a mix of protocols and technologies. This diversity can lead to a lack of standardization in your integration ecosystem. 
  • Documentation and Knowledge Transfer: Without proper documentation and knowledge transfer between new team members and the existing developers who created the point-to-point integrations, maintaining P2P connections can be challenging. 

Since point-to-point integrations involve developers spending a considerable amount of time writing the code for implementing direct connections, many companies are looking for other solutions. 

You can implement point-to-point integrations using various tools available in the market. One such tool that we’ll discuss today is Exalate. 

Exalate for Peer-to-Peer Connections is a program that empowers businesses to create direct, efficient, rapid, and secure connections between their systems, fostering a network that transcends geographical boundaries. 

Let’s delve into this a little more in the next section. 

Exalate for Point-to-Point Integration

Exalate is a cutting-edge integration platform that facilitates point-to-point connections between diverse systems, empowering organizations to connect, synchronize, and collaborate efficiently. If your organization wants to link up with just one other department, team, or company, you can create what we call a peer-to-peer (P2P) connection.

It supports bi-directional synchronization between various applications like Jira, Azure DevOps, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Zendesk, GitHub, and more. You can set up basic to advanced point-to-point integrations using Exalate’s no-code and low-code modes.

Key Features of Exalate for Point-to-Point Integrations

Some unique features make Exalate an ideal choice for implementing point-to-point integration. 

  • It enables bi-directional synchronization, ensuring changes in one system are reflected in real-time in the connected system. This two-way communication streamlines processes and keeps information up-to-date across the network
  • It provides tailored integrations with customizable mapping features. You get to define how data is transferred between systems, allowing for a personalized integration experience
  • It prioritizes security and compliance, offering robust encryption and ensuring data transmission adheres to industry standards. You can trust that your information is protected with every point-to-point interaction
  • It caters to various integration needs, from a startup to a multinational corporation. Its architecture is designed to handle the complexities of diverse business environments, making it a versatile solution for companies of all sizes
  • It also supports AI-assisted integration where you can use human-based prompts to set up complex integrations. Just type in your sync requirement and let the AI generate the script for you. Know more about this feature here.

Exalate for MSPs is an extension of the P2P Exalate program, where we help MSPs and MSSPs implement end-to-end integration with their partners, vendors, or customers.

This brings us to our next point: what is the possible outcome of these numerous point-to-point integration networks? 

Creating Connected Networks with Point-to-Point Integration

At Exalate, we dream of a global network of connected companies. Picture this: a company has its point-to-point connection network with various other apps for specific jobs. This company wants to connect with other companies or teams, having their individual point-to-point networks.

It’s a challenge because these individual networks are spread out, with no central control and there is a need to ensure that every part of each network is connected to the required endpoint. 

Connecting these fragmented point-to-point (or meshed) networks and building a global network takes innovation and teamwork. With Exalate, we’ll guide you on this journey. 

Book a demo with one of our integration engineers to see Exalate in action. 

Conclusion

A point-to-point integration emerges as a powerful solution for organizations seeking efficient and direct connections between their systems. We’ve explored how this approach, exemplified by Exalate, enables businesses to transcend geographical and technological boundaries, fostering real-time collaboration and streamlined workflows.

The journey from peer-to-peer integrations to interconnected company clusters and the vision of a global network of connected companies signifies the evolution toward a seamlessly integrated future.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Point-to-point integration (Star integration) and how does it differ from other integration approaches? 

Point-to-point integration, or star integration, connects systems directly to each other, forming a star-like network. Unlike hub-and-spoke with a central hub, or bus integration with a shared channel, point-to-point lacks intermediary components. It is simple to set up but potentially becomes complex as systems increase.

What is a point-to-point integration example? 

An example of a point-to-point integration is when your customer service teams work in ServiceNow, whereas your development team works in Jira. Customer incidents coming into ServiceNow can require the dev team’s attention.

A point-to-point integration between ServiceNow and Jira will ensure incidents in ServiceNow are directly escalated to Jira and all the required information and statuses are updated in both systems to have clear visibility. 

What are the advantages of point-to-point integration? 

A point-to-point connection offers simplicity, enabling quick and specific data exchange between two systems. It often requires less initial setup and can be cost-effective for a small number of integrated systems. Additionally, it allows for a clear understanding of data flow between connected entities.

Can point-to-point integration scale to accommodate growing business needs? 

Point-to-point integration becomes less scalable as business needs grow. While suitable for a small number of integrated systems due to its simplicity, the approach can lead to complexity and maintenance challenges as the number of connections increases.

Scaling may result in a cumbersome network, making it less efficient compared to more centralized or distributed integration architectures for handling larger and more complex business requirements.

However, with the right integration tools, scaling and maintaining point-to-point integrations is a piece of cake. 

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