Integration as a Service (IaaS) – Definition and Benefits

Integration as a Service (IaaS) has become a popular model for facilitating integrations between enterprise applications. 

Its popularity is driven by organizations seeking better connected systems in their increasingly complex and siloed enterprise architectures. 

Jump to:

• What is Integration as a Service?
• Why Integrate Solutions?
• IaaS vs. iPaaS
• Benefits of IaaS
• IaaS for ServiceNow

What is Integration as a Service?

Integration as a Service is a cloud model for integrating disparate technologies. As the integrations are facilitated in the cloud, the IaaS model allows for real-time data delivery between applications.

It is an extension of the Software as a Service (SaaS) model, where enterprises purchase software licenses on a subscription basis. In a similar vein, IaaS customers typically purchase integration services via subscription and pay-as-you-go models.

As with SaaS, IaaS vendors typically provide and maintain the infrastructure – i.e. servers – and a web-based interface for the end user.

This allows users to interface with one tool that is synchronized with one or many other tools that would otherwise be siloed. Without such synchronization, employees often adopt the inefficient “swivel-chair” approach to managing multiple applications, manually switching between apps and copying data from one to another.  

Integrations facilitated by IaaS vendors allow data to flow more freely through disparate technologies while remaining secure.

As such, IaaS vendors help organizations make data more readily available to better serve the organization and their customers.

By leveraging IaaS vendors, organizations can offload the burden of building, managing and maintaining integrations. 

This means IaaS customers can also expect greater agility, scalability and an increased scope for automating business processes within their organization. 

Why Integrate Solutions?

Data is at the heart of modern organization’s strategies for serving their customer’s needs. The typical data-driven organization now has large volumes of insightful data and the best-in-class, data-driven enterprises use it to their advantage. But this is easier said than done. 

In complex, and disconnected enterprise architectures, data is siloed, unable to move efficiently between applications and difficult to extract value and insight from. 

IaaS vs. iPaaS

Integration as a service and integration platform as a service (iPaaS) are not the same. 

IaaS differs from iPaaS in that iPaaS vendors deliver an integration platform, not the integration itself. With iPaaS, you build (and maintain) the integrations. 

Typically, you’re also responsible for setting up, maintaining, and adding extensive code to facilitate the integrations. 

In contrast, IaaS vendors are responsible for providing and maintaining the integration as a complete service. 

Benefits of IaaS

Well-integrated applications provide organizations with a number of benefits including:

• Improved data availability
• Inter-application workflows
• Increased scope for process automation
• A more scalable architecture

By providing and maintaining the whole integration, IaaS benefits extend to:

• Managing costs more effectively through subscription and pay-as-you-go models 
• Removing the burden of maintaining integrations 
• Eliminating the cost of maintaining data center infrastructure

IaaS for ServiceNow

IT Service Management tools are a common use case for the integration as a service model.

• See also: The Unrivaled Guide to Data Integration for Service Management

Tools such as ServiceNow are notorious for generating huge volumes of potentially insightful data. However, the data needs to be extracted and replicated to solutions where it can be more comprehensively analyzed, manipulated and accessed. 

As such, many organizations seek to better connect ServiceNow with other applications.

Perspectium is an integration as a service vendor specializing in connecting ServiceNow – a leading ITSM solution – to other applications. 

As both a Premium partner, and a vendor facilitating integrations for ServiceNow themselves, Perspectium gives users the confidence they need to move huge amounts of data without performance issues.

Connecting ServiceNow to BI tools, ServiceNow to development tools and even connecting one ServiceNow instance to another are all common IaaS use cases for Perspectium.

With Perspectium, integrations are facilitated via a native application for ServiceNow. This is an important distinction with competing IaaS vendors who typically offer custom-built integrations via web-tools. 

The custom approach means the integration shares bandwidth with ServiceNow. When extracting data from ServiceNow to facilitate the integration users experience significant impacts to ServiceNow performance, slowing query speeds and limiting the data availability. 

As a native application, Perspectium users can use the ServiceNow platform itself as the interface for their integrated technologies. 

With Perspectium, users can expect the following benefits:

• Performance. Move tens of millions of transactions every day without negatively impacting performance for better throughput. 
• Security. Perspectium ensures integrations are secure. Customers hold the data-encryption keys that the integration uses.
• Availability. Integration with “store and forward” architecture ensures that your data always gets to where it’s needed.
• Scalability. Exchange as much data as you need, even as your data volumes grow. Enable inter-application workflows for attachments, work notes and related items without affecting performance.
• Privacy. Inbuilt data obfuscation capabilities ensure that PII data is not shared unintentionally.
• Compatibility. Ensure that all versions of all your applications continue to work together – even if you swap them out.
• Maintenance. Confidently upgrade your applications knowing that your integrations will keep working.
• Performance. Ensure performance not just of integrations, but all of the integrated applications as well.

Looking for more information on your integration options? Choosing the Right Integration Approach is a Perspectium guide aimed at helping you make an informed decision when choosing your integration method. 

Whether you’re already working with large data volumes and inhibited by existing integrations, or planning to future-proof your scalability, Perspectium can help.

Need more immediate advice on your ServiceNow integration project? Speak to us.