What Is the Hybrid Integration Platform and Why Use It?

Hybrid Integration Platforms (HIPs) are gaining popularity yearly. The number of online businesses that integrate their IT segments using these solutions is growing rapidly, and there are many good reasons for it. One of the chief reasons is that each business nowadays uses a lot of different IT solutions, and they need to work cohesively.

In short, a Hybrid Integration Platform is a system with a variety of integration tools designed to bring your hardware, software, SaaS, and app databases together into one well-built network. It’s very important because without this sort of cohesion, the bigger the business gets, the more entangled it’ll become without a proper system.

So, what are these platforms?

What is Hybrid Integration Platform?

There are many HIT solutions. Obviously, they vary in quality and selection, but a lot of them have a good enough variety of instruments that can connect all of your IT structures into a single hierarchy controlled centrally.

If the solution is even remotely modern, it can usually be molded into a single system and that includes (among other things):

• Hardware (servers, devices, databanks);
• On-premises software;
• Cloud systems (public & private);
• SaaS & IaaS services;
• Mobile applications.

They all have one thing in common: they store, manage, and process information. Since online businesses run virtually on information alone, these are your gold mines. The problem with them is that you will have to deal with different types of IT solutions, and they should work together in order to be useful. That’s exactly why you need some sort of integration tool.

In the olden days, you would try to connect these together using primitive integrations that could connect the cloud with hardware or apps with the cloud. You’ll have to use a million stitches and even then it’s not bound to work because you likely used tools from different providers.

We are confident that we have what it takes to help you get your platform from the idea throughout design and development phases, all the way to successful deployment in a production environment!

How do HIPs work?

HIPs don’t just stitch different solutions together and leave you to work out the rest yourself. Many of them are made for your comfort, which means they have convenient control centers that can be used to access your numerous IT systems in a structure you want. But that’s on the surface, even if very much welcome.

These solutions hide the actual processes that happen under the surface. The platforms hold different applications, connectors, and other software that connect the different software you have to the platform. They don’t as much connect the solutions to one another as just put them next to one another in a single command center.

It still means they can interact with one another, share information, and otherwise complement one another, which is the ultimate goal of the platform. ‘Hybrid’ in the name reflects the fact that you can put cloud services, applications, and on-premises software together and use them as if they weren’t completely different.

But how exactly is it useful? Well, there are several key advantages and boosts this system can provide to your business.

Higher work efficiency

Perhaps the biggest charm of these platforms is that all of your IT systems are interconnected, which means all the departments that use multiple databases in your business actually get to share the information with one another. The usefulness of that can’t be understated.

If you want your business to achieve peak efficiency, you need your departments to share data. Some of them receive personal information, others analyze it, and others produce marketing based on this data. The details need to go places, in short. Otherwise, many of these departments can’t do their job.

And hybrid platforms don’t just make sure data can be sent around. They also try to make the process as streamlined and smooth as possible. That’s the primary concern of integrations – they create connections that don’t slow the natural data flow down, as if the stitches weren’t even there.

As a result, info about your clients can be gathered, verified, and made use of in the shortest time possible, and that increases profits.

Lower costs

It depends on the exact platform, of course, but they generally reduce costs on managing the vast collection of data you accumulated. This happens for several main reasons.

The expenses of integrating your systems using just one service are much smaller than if you’d use many separate tools or wouldn’t integrate them at all. If you didn’t, then the data would need to be joggled around using some other mechanisms that don’t connect the information directly.

This costs time, and it basically means you can’t process as much information, which leads to physical limitations on the number of clients you can satisfy.

Ultimate compatibility

With most up-to-date platforms, you get to integrate all the services you need without regard to their small differences. It can be done through many connectors that make sure differently-built systems can co-exist. They don’t just provide access for one system to the rest. They also make sure the connection is well-oiled.

The data is adjusted and managed to fit the structure of the system, which means there aren’t going to be hiccups related to incompatibility. That being said, the solutions need to be at least somewhat well-known or built using a known structure. Otherwise, you’ll have to figure out how to connect the thing yourself and tweak it accordingly.

Yet, even that is not big of a problem for most platforms. They try to create as smooth a user experience as possible, usually.

Centralized response

Your work in managing the exchange between departments is mostly about monitoring the system and making sure there are no issues, security breaches, or congestions. Fortunately, these platforms provide you with a unified monitoring system. You can actually design it to your liking.

These are usually called control or command centers. Their primary purpose is to notify you about all the activity within your IT system. This means you can uphold the efficiency, redirect data to less congested routes, and manage risks from the high place. In short, you’ll always be notified and armed against all sorts of issues.

Potential for automation

One of the cherries on top of the other benefits is that you can also automate some of the work that happens in this system. The data exchange and management is really a routine work. Even analysis can be done by trainable AI that doesn’t burn out or loses efficiency over time. That’s a prime environment for such solutions.

Automation is rapidly getting momentum in IT. It does mean that you replace a human employee with a robot that does their job faster and with more stability. They don’t even make that many mistakes compared to their human colleagues because you can’t really slip up sending information from point A to point B.

A boring, routine job that can be done without a living being wasting their time doing the task that must be done by an AI. It increases efficiency and spares a person from suffering.

Ease of innovating

All businesses scale one way or another. It can be either extensive development (meaning more dedicated resources) or intensive development (meaning new, more efficient solutions).

The latter is a particularly good option, although you also need to know if the new solutions are compatible with your system. Usually, that is. If you have an HIP at work, you don’t need to worry about anything because even if the platform doesn’t support the solution yet, it can soon be updated for this purpose.

Essentially, you can connect the innovative system to your wider network and start managing it immediately. As a result, you get to enjoy the advantages without additional headaches. But you will probably need to figure out how exactly to connect your new service to the platform.

Are they worth obtaining?

Any business can benefit from being thoroughly integrated using a proper HIP. However, they aren’t equally efficient for all online businesses. Some just don’t need the same amount of integration because they don’t use an incompatible, different type of software. They are bound to have solutions required for integration, but sometimes you can just get the same results using smaller integrators.

Usually, small businesses unburdened with complex IT structures don’t need control centers or high-efficiency management either. Most of them have 2-3 departments, tops. The volume of data in such businesses is usually negligible and can be exchanged through the usual means.

Issues

Hybrid Integration Platforms are very welcome in today’s multifaceted IT world. For sprawling businesses, this sort of solution is paramount. You can’t work without a proper platform anymore when people expect top efficiency from you.

Unfortunately, they are not perfect. You need to remember that, as comfortable and streamlined as they are, these platforms are still just advanced instruments. You need to understand how they work and how to make them work. Otherwise, they won’t operate at peak efficiency at all and may even be an obstacle.

Obviously, many modern solutions, like Azure or Oracle, are built to make the process of connecting all your databases into one network as all-encompassing and simple. However, try to connect a few wild unknown applications to it, and it may turn out that your platform doesn’t even support them.

So, you’ll either have to figure out how to connect them anyway or leave part of your database behind, scrapping part of your valuable processing power or, in the worst-case scenario, even some information.

Summary

In general, these platforms are superior. You can still use them for a small business, and they’ll still increase your profits. So, a lot of people think HIPs aren’t worth the hassle for smaller systems. It may be true, but for bigger ones, they are absolutely mandatory. You can be sure of that.

Author

Ivan Kolesnikov

Total Articles: 211