iPaaS features

Louis-Victor Jadavji, Cofounder of Taloflow
November 30, 2022

The amount and complexity of iPaaS features have increased dramatically

The breadth of iPaaS features has grown.

This guide has a list of every important iPaaS feature to help you identify the features you really need for your use case. We hope that you’ll be able to find the best provider for your use case, budget, and compliance needs, among other things.

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This resource covers features in the following categories:

  • Use Case Suitability: How important is it that the service works seamlessly for your target integration use case with minimal changes to your architecture or internal processes?
  • Messaging: How important is it to have the ability to modify and manage messages as they pass through the integration platform?
  • Data Management: How important are flexible policies, interchangeability, and reusability when managing artifacts, extensions, and an integration catalog?
  • Workflow: How important is it to be able to design and develop integration processes across environments and in a way that is suitable for your IT team, developers, and line of business users?
  • Security: How important is it that the service give your security team the tools to ensure secure communication?
  • Compliance: How important is it that the service meet compliance and quality assurance standards?
  • Pricing: How important is it that you get the best (or cheapest) pricing model for your use case and that it scales well with your projected growth in demand?
  • Integration: How important is connecting to different applications, data sources, systems, and processes?
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Use Case Suitability

Integration Marketplace

You can make your artifacts reusable and available via marketplaces.

API Integration

Get APIs from different sources to work together.

Data Integration

Get different data sources (e.g., on-prem data store, cloud-based data store, data lakes, data warehouses, etc.) to work together.

B2B/EDI-based Integration

Supports managing B2B/EDI-based integrations and the overall ecosystem.

IoT Integration

Supports integrating IoT solutions (e.g., to support the MQTT protocol).

Event Stream Ingestion

Event-processing support.

On-Premise Data Sources

Support for integrating on-prem apps, data sources, and legacy applications.

In-memory Repositories

Support for connectivity to in-memory data grids (IMDGs).

Common Design

Get consistency across environments to support all delivery models.

Common Metadata

Seamlessly share and sync metadata repositories.

Data Modeling

Create and maintain data models.

Data Virtualization

Create in-memory virtualized views from data in disparate sources.

Legacy App Data Sources

Connect to a legacy data store.

On-premises Deployment

Deploy the platform on-premises.

Cloud Deployment

Deploy the platform in a public cloud infrastructure platform, like AWS or Azure, or a private cloud, like VMware.

Hybrid or Multi-cloud Deployment

Deploy the runtime component of the platform either on-premises or in a cloud infrastructure different from the infrastructure where the development, governance, and operation components run.

Hosted PaaS

Get a hosted deployment model via a dedicated, single-tenant implementation.

Messaging

Request/Reply Message Interaction Mode

Request/Reply mode of interaction for messages.

PubSub Message Interaction Mode

Publish and subscribe mode of interaction for messages.

Event-driven Message Interaction Mode

Event-stream processing.

Bulk/batch Interaction Mode

Bulk data extraction and loading.

File-driven Message Interaction Mode

File-based interactions.

Message Routing

Provides the ability to route or reroute the message based on business requirements. 

Message Validation

Provides the ability to validate messages.

Message Inspection

Provides the ability to inspect messages.

Message Enrichment

Provides the ability to enrich messages.

Message Logging

Provides the ability to log messages for traceability.

Message Service Abstraction

Provides the ability to deploy all aspects of runtime functioning as services.

Message Service Binding

Creates associations between service providers and consumers.

Data Management

Data Quality Management

Supports integration with third-party data profiling and data quality tools.

Data Catalog

Support for cataloging your data assets.

API Marketplace

Provides an API marketplace that aggregates APIs and provides a place for integration developers to upload, distribute, and monetize their APIs.

Integration Catalog

Maintains the catalog of workflows, process models, APIs, etc.

Profiling and Monitoring

Metadata interchange with data profiling and data quality monitoring.

API/Integration Policy Enablement

Enforces compliance and security policies around APIs and integrations.

Workflow

Automated System Monitoring and Alerting

Set rules for automated system monitoring, alerts, and an automatically triggered flow/behavior during outages.

Runtime Administration

Tools for developers and administrators to manage runtime.

Version Control

Version control and provisioning.

Redundancy Detection

Detect data redundancies and inconsistencies with a central semantic store or master reference store.

Interchangeable Artifacts for Hybrid Environments

Reuse artifacts to identify redundancies, the interchangeable use of artifacts, etc. The benefits are not simply redundancy detection but also the enhanced capabilities that come from a common or shared user interface for the design and development of integration constructs and interchangeable use of artifacts for both on-premises and cloud environments.

Automated Integration Flow Testing

Automatically test the integration flows, and APIs developed.

High Degree of Interoperability

High level of interoperability between technical and non-technical users.

Good Development Workflow Experience

Workflow management for the development process.

Suitable for Integration Specialists

The UX is suitable for advanced or highly-skilled integration domain experts.

Suitable for IT Practitioners

Has a mix of low-code and advanced tooling.

Suitable for Line of Business Users

Highly effective UX for non-integration specialists.

API Developer Portal

Provide an API portal to help developers create and manage APIs.

API Administration Portal

Provide an API administration portal to help with API administration.

API Gateway

Provides a gateway for secure access to APIs and integrations.

Reusable Integration Templates

Provide templates and accelerators to speed up the development of integrations.

Security

Management Console

Console for managing the integration activity related to all systems.

User Activity Logs

Track the activity of users on the platform.

User Authentication via IAM

IAM is a standard for securely controlling access to resources.

Data Masking

Mask your data while it's in motion.

Row/Column Level Security

Selectively restrict types of information that require additional security.

Custom Authorization Policies

Custom policy-based authorization.

Compliance

RBAC

The organization can set up advanced access limits for individuals based on their role and filter queries for performance monitoring.

ISO 27001

Standard for information security management systems.

ISO 27017

Standard for information security management systems.

ISO 27018

Standard for information security management systems.

SOC 2 Type 1

Standard promoted by the American Institute of CPAs that ensures the integrity and privacy of customer data.

SOC 2 Type 2

Standard promoted by the American Institute of CPAs that ensures the integrity and privacy of customer data.

SOX

Standard for public companies that ensures that annual audits take place and are legally required to show evidence of accurate and secure financial reporting.

PCI DSS

Standard that ensures consistent practices are met for data security in the payments card industry.

GDPR

Regulation on data protection and privacy of the data tied to citizens and residents of EU countries.

CCPA

Regulation on data protection and privacy of the data tied to residents of California.

HIPAA

Demonstrates security and compliance with the standards of the healthcare industry.

FFIEC

Complies with the encryption requirements for all online transaction processing (OLTP) done by financial institutions.

IRAP

The Australian government standard for assessing the implementation and effectiveness of an organization’s security controls against the Australian government’s security requirements.

MTCS

Multi-tier cloud security standard set up by the Singapore government.

FISMA

Compliance with U.S. government legislation that defines a comprehensive framework that protects government information, operations, and assets against threats.

FedRAMP

Ensures that the government security requirements outlined in NIST 800-53 are met and supplemented by the PMO of FedRAMP.

Pricing

Reasonable Pricing for Lots of Messages

The pricing structure is suitable for use cases with many messages processed.

Reasonable Pricing for Lots of Connectors

The pricing structure is suitable for use cases with many connectors.

Reasonable Pricing for Lots of API Calls

The pricing structure is suitable for use cases with many API calls.

Reasonable Pricing for Lots of Users

The pricing structure is suitable for use cases with many users.

Reasonable Pricing for Lots of Data

The pricing structure is suitable for use cases with lots of load/data in the messages that are processed.

Reasonable Pricing for Lots of Actions

The pricing structure is suitable for use cases with lots of processing steps, including invokes for error handling, message validation, or calls to 3rd party log analytics.

Integration

Application Connectors

Application connectors are available for on-premise or cloud-based packaged applications.

Database Connectors

Database connectors are available for various kinds of data sources.

File Processing

Process files like documents or CSVs you want to send directly to a folder location via FTP or SFTP protocol.

Custom Connectors

Build custom connectors on the platform.

Snowflake

Provides a ready-made connector for Snowflake.

Amazon RedShift

Provides a ready-made connector for Amazon RedShift.

Amazon S3

Provides a ready-made connector for Amazon S3.

Oracle DB

Supports Oracle DB/JDBC integrations with a ready-made connector.

Google Cloud Storage

Provides a ready-made connector for Google Cloud Storage.

HDFS

Provides a ready-made connector for Hadoop clusters.

Azure Blob Storage

Provides a ready-made connector for Azure Blob Storage.

Redis

Provides a ready-made connector for Redis.

MongoDB

Provides a ready-made connector for MongoDB.

Apache Spark

Provides a ready-made connector for Apache Spark.

SQL

Provides a ready-made connector for SQL.

Apache Kafka

Provides a ready-made connector for Apache Kafka.

Amazon SNS

Provides a ready-made connector for Amazon SNS.

Azure Event Grid

Provides a ready-made connector for Azure Event Grid.

SAP HANA

Provides a ready-made connector for SAP HANA.

Presto

Provides a ready-made connector for Presto.

PostgreSQL

Provides a ready-made connector for PostgreSQL.

Knack

Provides a ready-made connector for Knack.

Hadoop Hive

Provides a ready-made connector for Hadoop Hive.

Amazon RDS

Provides a ready-made connector for Amazon RDS.

Google BigQuery

Provides a ready-made connector for Google BigQuery.

MySQL

Supports MySQL/JDBC integrations with a ready-made connector.

Microsoft SQL Server

Provides a ready-made connector for Microsoft SQL Server.

Amazon Kinesis

Provides a ready-made connector for Amazon Kinesis.

Solace (PubSub+)

Provides a ready-made connector for Solace (PubSub+).

Apache Kafka

Provides a ready-made connector for Apache Kafka.

Google Pub/Sub

Provides a ready-made connector for Google Pub/Sub.

Apache MQ

Supports connections to the Apache MQ message queue technology.

Amazon MQ

Supports connections to the Amazon MQ message queue technology.

Rabbit MQ

Supports connections to the Rabbit MQ message queue technology.

IBM MQ

Supports connections to the IBM MQ message queue technology.

Amazon SQS

Supports connections to Amazon SQS.

AMQP

Supports the AMQP messaging protocol.

MQTT

Supports the MQTT messaging protocol.

SWIFT

Supports the SWIFT international payment transfers network.

HL7

Supports international standards for the transfer of clinical and administrative data between software applications that use HL7.

AS2

Supports the AS2 B2B messaging protocol for transferring EDI documents to B2B trading partners.

EDIFACT

Supports the EDIFACT Document standard that transfers EDI documents to B2B trading partners.

EDIFICE

Supports the EDIFICE format, the European B2B standard format for the electronics industry.

ANSI X.12

Supports the industry-specific ANSI X12 format used for uniform standards for the inter-industry electronic exchange of business transactions.

VDA

Supports the VDA format, a German B2B standard for the auto industry.

XBRL

Supports the XBRL format mainly used for e-commerce B2B data exchange.

RosettaNet

Supports the RosettaNet format mainly used for B2B data exchange in the high-tech and electronics industry.

TRADACOMS

Supports the TRADACOMS format mainly used for B2B data exchange in the UK retail sector.

EANCOM

Supports the EANCOM format, a subset of the EDI format, and is used to integrate information sent electronically with the physical flow of goods.

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