iPaaS (Integration-Platform-as-a-Service) is a cloud-based solution that integrates disparate data sources, applications, and systems. iPaaS simplifies the integration and establishes communication between various systems within an organization and with third parties or partners. 

To further understand the definition of iPaaS, think of it as a platform for building, deploying, and managing integrations in the cloud. With an iPaaS, you can create integration flows that connect applications living in the cloud or on-premises and deploy them without the need to install or manage any hardware or middleware.

iPaaS includes tools and technologies that support the execution of integration flows, the lifecycle management and development of integrations, the monitoring, and management of governance, application flows, and essential cloud features like self-provisioning, multitenancy, and elasticity. It can also help with the selling, buying, and exchange of integration solutions between service providers, solution providers, and users. A more complete iPaaS solution also offers a single, consolidated and secure platform to create, manage and deploy APIs simplifying the entire API lifecycle management.

iPaaS delivers a cloud service for data, process, application, and service-oriented architecture or SOA integration scenarios. Integration Platform as a Service is a multi-tenant platform that supports B2B, cloud-to-cloud, cloud-to-on-premises, and on-premises-to-on-premises integration. iPaaS vendors support real-time integration and scales to meet the high-volume demands of mobile, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), and ETL environments.

iPaaS can benefit your organization in several ways. As organizations want to take advantage of the agility, speed, and economics of the cloud, there is an evolving need to view integration in a brand-new way. iPaaS solutions help companies handle the integration requirements of the modern business environment, future-proof their integration solutions, and boost the value of their IT investments. Here are some of the top benefits of iPaaS:

Ease of use: iPaaS allows a low code or no-code approach which increases the speed at which integrations are developed and deployed. This reduces the dependency on the specialized resources or heavy involvement from the IT department and empowers the non-tech users often called ‘citizen integrators’ to develop their own integrations to be up and running in no time.  iPaaS provides pre-built connectors, adapters, templates, and recipes that accelerate integrations, seamlessly connecting applications that can be in the cloud or on-premises. It also provides a toolkit making the management and monitoring of integrations hassle-free.

Faster Time-to-Value: iPaaS rapidly integrates applications and data sources, yielding substantial time savings. With pre-built connectors and a low-code approach, companies are able to quickly automate key business processes such as Quote-to-Cash or Employee Onboarding, to realize fast ROI. Organizations can simply subscribe and start integrating applications accelerating their digital transformation.

Cost-Effective: As the tech stack grows and more applications are adopted, the integration costs are bound to increase. iPaaS takes away the need to build integrations from the ground up, and the associated infrastructure, resources to manage and maintain these integrations, all are provided by the iPaaS vendor, which leads to substantial savings. iPaaS is typically procured as a subscription service and provides customers with a predictable and manageable expense.

Scalability and Flexibility: iPaaS enables organizations to maintain their business agility, helping them to tackle and accommodate the dynamic changes. Organizations can create as many connections as they like between hundreds of applications rapidly.  The new solutions or services added can be quickly integrated with iPaaS taking away the overhead of labor, costs, hardware, and time investment. Businesses are enabled by iPaaS to meet the changing demands and be future-proof.

Multitenancy: iPaaS allows multiple tenants or customer organizations to share underlying physical computing resources in a secure way. iPaaS manages and updates the software and infrastructure and deploys upgrades at regular intervals across the customer base. This eliminates the need for customers to buy, implement, manage, and maintain the underlying software and hardware infrastructure.

Enhanced Security and Compliance: Security is always a concern for organizations with threats and breaches being a consistent possibility in cloud environments. iPaaS offers improved security, reducing the risk of any breaches, by providing threat identification, fraud detection, and intruder alerts. In addition, iPaaS ensures compliance adhering to industry standards such as GDPR, HIPAA with regular updates helping to meet changing regulations and compliance standards.

Built-In API Management:  More and more, a complete iPaaS solution also includes API Management. Organizations can leverage capabilities to create, publish, manage and measure APIs, across the entire API lifecycle. This helps organizations operate in real-time and create microservices from a single secure platform.

Central management: iPaaS allows integrations to be developed, designed, and managed from a single centralized web-based console. This makes it very convenient to create and monitor all the integrations and processes from a centralized view across the enterprise.

Improve Efficiency and Productivity: iPaaS automates business processes and helps save time, costs, and resources resulting in efficiency gains. An easy interface and an intuitive design expedite connecting various systems, thereby improving productivity while building integrations. IT teams do not have to invest time in managing and monitoring integrations and focus their energies on strategic initiatives. iPaaS also helps teams to collaborate better with data being transferred in real-time, eliminating the possibility of silo creation.

ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) was the norm for businesses in the 1990s and into the 2000s. This technology was used to support SOA (service-oriented architecture).

iPaaS and ESB are made to serve the same purpose, that is, to integrate applications. However, iPaaS and ESB differ depending on the kind of integrations, complexity, and scalability. ESB is an architectural pattern that helps establish communication between applications over bus-like infrastructure. ESB is the pre-cloud era technology aimed at connecting legacy, on-premises systems, enabling data exchange. It requires custom coding along with associated hardware and was used by large enterprises to connect their software applications in their infrastructure. Although expensive, complicated, and heavy-weight, ESB served the purpose of bringing together the legacy and on-premises systems and offered vertical scalability.

iPaaS on the other hand is a modern cloud-based environment that provides a fast, simple, and cost-effective way to integrate applications with improved security. With its lightweight architecture, iPaaS automates the integration of cloud-based apps and real-time data transfer.. iPaaS also supports hybrid integration, connecting applications and data across cloud and on-premises systems. 

With its horizontal scalability, iPaaS makes it very easy to add new applications to the IT environment as well as connect with third parties or partners while ESB is meant to integrate internally. This is possible due to the low latency of IpaaS and the use of lightweight messaging standards like JSON, REST and API systems. The other major difference would be the multi-tenancy of iPaaS that helps users access data in real-time simultaneously, reduce administrative costs, and eliminate the complexity of maintaining the physical environment.  

In essence, iPaaS is meant for organizations that want the speed and flexibility to quickly integrate cloud-based applications or legacy on-premises systems.  ESB integrates legacy on-premises systems and is the choice when some factors restrict data to be in-house and on-premises.

These two terms sound so similar that it is easy to be confused. PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) is a cloud-based application development toolkit that developers use to quickly build and deliver applications without the hassle of an infrastructure. The PaaS vendor provides all the necessary needs of hardware software and hosting. 

iPaaS empowers users  to create integration applications quickly and efficiently, without worrying about managing and maintaining the infrastructure required. The companies also stand to gain huge benefits with iPaaS adoption in terms of costs and time savings along with increased security, speed to market, and future scalability to name a few more.

While PaaS is a platform that provides virtualized technology to develop and deploy applications, iPaaS is a cloud-based platform that integrates different applications and data sources, automating data transfer across the systems. In simple terms, iPaaS connects systems that are not meant to work with each other. With connectors, templates, and integration workflows, iPaaS connects applications that may be on-premises or on the cloud, augmenting PaaS and ensuring the applications created can be used together seamlessly.