Global spend on cloud-based integration platforms to touch $3.7bn by 2018 Saurabh Sharma, Senior Ana
Ovum’s Integration Middleware Global Market Forecast Model estimates that the spend on cloud-based integration platforms will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 31% between 2012 and 2018, reaching $3.7bn by the end of 2018. Over the same period, spending on cloud-based integration platforms in the Americas and Asia-Pacific regions will grow at CAGRs of 27% and 44% respectively. The Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) cloud-based integration platforms market is expected to grow from $
iPaaS is emerging as a suitable option for a wide range of integration needs
The emergence of integration-as-a-service (IaaS), the first truly cloud-based integration approach, marked the start of the “middleware-as-a-service” era. These solutions focused on enabling SaaS integration in a shorter time and at a lower total cost of ownership (TCO). Integration-platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) is an extension of the functionality provided by IaaS. iPaaS solutions enable users to create, manage, and govern integration flows connecting a wide range of applications or data sources.
The mode of delivery of integration capabilities is not the only differentiating feature between iPaaS and traditional integration approaches. Multi-tenancy, rapid scalability, user-friendly development interfaces, and a rich set of pre-built connectors and integration templates are the basic features of any iPaaS solution. Only cloud-based integration platforms that are single-instance, multi-tenant, scalable solutions, providing necessary tools and resources for faster development of integration flows connecting different applications and data sources, as well as enabling governance of such interactions, can be termed as iPaaS solutions.
Most of the early adopters of iPaaS have been successful in achieving SaaS-to-SaaS and SaaS-to-on-premise integration. iPaaS was initially thought of as a “good enough” approach for SaaS integration that could help organizations overcome the limitations of traditional integration approaches. Over time, however, iPaaS solutions have gained capabilities to be able to meet the requirements of on-premise-to-on-premise and less complex B2B integration.
In most organizations, iPaaS was initially adopted for achieving SaaS integration, and once IT became conversant with features and functionality of the solution, the use of iPaaS was extended to on-premise and B2B integration. Some iPaaS solutions can also meet the needs of social and mobile application integration and API management. Many organizations are using iPaaS solutions for projects involving a mix of SaaS, on-premise, and B2B integration.
Cloud-based integration platforms will account for over 20% of the global integration middleware spend by 2018
The global spend on cloud-based integration platforms is expected to increase from $
Spending on cloud-based integration platforms in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to grow from about $
The share of the Asia-Pacific region in the global spend on cloud-based integration platforms will increase from 11% in 2013 to 17.5% by the end of 2018, whereas that of the Americas will decrease from 67% to 58% over the same period. North America (US and Canada) will remain the single largest regional market over the forecast period.
Ovum estimates that the share of cloud-based integration platforms in the global spend on integration middleware will increase from about 7% in 2012 to about 20% by the end of 2018. The figure is expected to increase by 3.5 percentage points in 2013, marking the first major surge in adoption of cloud-based integration platforms.
Interestingly, the share of application integration middleware in the global spend on integration middleware will decrease from 71% in 2012 to 61% by 2018. Over the same period, the share of B2B integration middleware out of the total spend on integration middleware will decrease by about three percentage points. This is indicative of the convergence of different integration approaches. By the end of 2017, the global spend on cloud-based integration platforms will exceed that of B2B integration middleware.
