As integration platforms as a service (iPaaS) continue to rise in popularity, developers and product teams are looking for a new tool to cover areas traditional iPaaS might not. In March 2022, G2 launched its Embedded Integration Platforms category to address an emerging area in the iPaaS space.
Embedded integration platforms bring iPaaS to the business user
iPaaS has long been used to manage, integrate, and govern cloud-based applications. While iPaaS tools are effective, they have historically been used for internal functions. Embedded integration platforms, also known as embedded iPaaS, are externally facing. They allow software providers to build and deliver integrations for their users.
What are Embedded Integration Platforms?
Embedded integration platforms, also called embedded iPaaS, allow product teams to build, govern, and manage native integrations with their customers’ preferred third-party applications. While traditional iPaaS platforms focus on connecting and automating internal functions, embedded integration platforms allow software providers to build and deliver integrations for their users.
For example, a product team may want their application to trigger notifications in their customer’s business instant messaging software. Rather than build and maintain such integration from scratch, companies can use embedded integration platforms to access prebuilt integration tools and automate development and maintenance workflows.
How do embedded integration platforms help?
While many users in an organization can benefit from embedded integration platforms, the ones who will benefit the most are business users. Many of the products in this space are “no code”, meaning users do not need to have a traditional coding background. Instead, embedded integration platforms are often self-service, empowering users to utilize the platforms independently with no technical support. This not only benefits them but developers as well, as it frees up time for them to work on other, more complex projects. Embedded integration platforms are sometimes so simplified that many tedious tasks can be automated, which means even non-technical users gain their time back to work on other areas.
Beyond minimizing the need for coding, embedded integration platforms also simplify the integration process itself. Embedded integration platforms often come with real-time, prebuilt connectors. This means that users can get set up very quickly. While manually setting up integrations can take months, embedded integration platforms can set the same integrations in a matter of days.
This is what led us to announce the new Embedded Integration Platforms category. There are several vendors with products specific to the category, such as Zapier, Workato, and Tray.io.
Looking forward
At G2, we’ll continue to update our taxonomy to represent emerging software markets. While the embedded iPaaS space is not as robust as the traditional iPaaS space, it’s an important piece of the platform as a service community. We expect to see more products added to the category as the iPaaS products continue to evolve rapidly.
