by Carol Stigum | December 17, 2024

What is a Hybrid Integration Platform (HIP)? Key Definitions, Importance, Features & Benefits

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In your organization, you may have legacy systems, on-premises data centers, private clouds, and public clouds. How do you integrate these disparate systems without a complete overhaul? Hybrid integration may be the answer. A hybrid integration platform (HIP) brings together disparate systems and data so that you can easily manage business functions such as multi-cloud ecosystems, global supply chains, and hybrid customer relationship management systems (CRMs) from a central location.

What is hybrid integration?

Many businesses are shifting their operations to the cloud, and for good reason. However, it would be extremely challenging to suddenly migrate all your technology to the cloud. You may temporarily have duplicate systems on-premises and in private and public clouds. Many businesses also decide to keep on-premises systems indefinitely because of security reasons or because of the disruption a cloud transfer would cause. A hybrid integration strategy allows all systems to communicate with one another while remaining in their current state.

For example, you have a Salesforce CRM in the cloud, but you also have an on-premises customer database that is too complex to migrate to the cloud. Hybrid integration allows you to obtain customer insights in real time without migrating legacy systems to the cloud.

What is a hybrid integration platform?

A hybrid integration platform (HIP) is a unified platform designed to support and simplify hybrid integration. It allows businesses to integrate and orchestrate workflows across both on-premises systems and cloud applications, allowing for real-time data exchange. Its event-driven architecture provides efficient communication between diverse systems, regardless of where they reside. HIPs are scalable so they can support the business as it gradually moves workloads to the cloud. HIPs also provide a single source of security and governance to diverse systems.

The importance of hybrid integration

Hybrid integration plays a critical role in modernizing your IT infrastructure. Hybrid integration bridges silos across your organization by ensuring that data flows seamlessly among disparate systems. Even your legacy on-premises systems can communicate with your cloud-native and SaaS solutions, modernizing your business without the difficulty of overhauling systems. HIPs allow for data consistency and accuracy, ensuring that all data, regardless of location, is secure and meets compliance standards. HIPs enable real-time data processing and analytics, even from legacy systems, allowing you to obtain customer insights and make key business decisions faster. HIPs also simplify application integration in the cloud and on-premises by providing tools for building, managing, and securing APIs. This way, you can use agile development practices for faster deployment of new services.

Essential features of a hybrid integration platform

All HIPs have the following features that support hybrid environments and allow them to work seamlessly.

API lifecycle management: This feature of HIP involves managing APIs from their creation through deployment, operation, and retirement across all environments (on-premises and cloud). It combines the benefits of a SaaS environment with the control of an on-premises environment.

Multi-cloud support: Your data may be stored in various types of cloud storage across the globe. A hybrid platform may include multiple cloud service providers, such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, so as not to be locked into any one ecosystem. The HIP provides a unified framework for integrating these environments.

Application and data integration: HIP lets you connect diverse applications to data, whether it is on-premises or stored in public or private clouds, by copying and synchronizing data across applications.

Secure messaging and event-driven architecture: HIP ensures that messages are encrypted during transit and at rest, whether the data is on-premises or in the cloud. Event-driven architecture is a software design principle in which systems or components communicate and respond to events in real time, such as user input or specific system triggers. Event-driver architecture is scalable to handle changes in event volumes.

Security and compliance features: The security components of HIP protect sensitive information and prevent security breaches. HIPs also support industry regulatory standards such as GDPR and HIPAA. By having an integrated platform, you can have standardized security and governance throughout your organization.

Scalability capacities: HIPs support both horizontal and vertical scaling. Horizontal scaling adds more nodes or servers to distribute workloads, while vertical scaling increases the resources of existing nodes. HIPs also perform load balancing and auto-scaling.

9 benefits of using a hybrid integration platform

While a HIP is an investment of planning and money, consider its benefits to your organization in terms of scalability and enhanced customer experience.

Enhanced flexibility and scalability: The event-driven architecture of HIPs allows for increased flexibility and scalability. Like cloud applications, HIPs dynamically scale integration workloads based on demand. APIs allow applications to interact with scale across hybrid environments.

Reduced human errors: HIPs reduce human errors by automating complex workflows and systems integrations. With centralized governance across the organization, you are assured error-free operations across cloud and on-premises environments.

Increased security and compliance: The built-in encryption and secure messaging of HIPs protect your hybrid environments better than having separate security for each part of your environment.

Better team collaboration: HIPs reduce data silos by having a line of communication between on-premises and the cloud. Data analysts and developers can work more effectively together with a unified set of tools.

Improved data transfer speeds: The optimized protocols and event-driven architecture of HIPs result in improved data transfer speeds. HIPs also include features such as in-memory caching to minimize latency.

Better customer experience: By integrating customer-facing applications, users can have a better experience across the platform. Businesses can offer more personalized recommendations when all data from different systems is readily available.

Enhanced employee experience: HIPs automate repetitive tasks and streamline workflows, reducing tedious manual effort. Low-code interfaces enable non-technical users to manage integrations easily and free up technical staff to focus on more critical issues.

Easier control of integrated processes: HIPs provide a single platform to monitor, manage, and orchestrate all integration processes, no matter where the processes exist. Organizations can monitor processes and resolve issues from a single dashboard. The low-code/no-code tools allow users to automate processes without deep programming knowledge.

Cost savings: HIPs consolidate integration tools, reducing the need for multiple standalone solutions. They are also scalable, meaning that you can add servers without incurring the expense of overhauling an entire system. HIPs often come with pre-built connectors, saving development costs.

How to choose the right hybrid integration platform for your needs

In the past, organizations built their own hybrid integration platform. This was a cumbersome process. You can now choose from many options for a complete hybrid integration solution. The following are a few things to consider when choosing a HIP.

Your business needs: Consider the needs of your business when choosing the right HIP. Do you need real-time data updates? Then you want a HIP with a robust event-driven architecture and fast messaging. Is your business expanding rapidly? In that case, you may opt for a cloud-native HIP, such as Boomi. If meeting compliance requirements is critical, such as HIPAA requirements, you need a HIP with strong compliance features.

Ease of use: Most likely, you will want a system that is easy to implement and easy for non-technical users to maintain. Look for such features as low-code or no-code user interfaces, pre-built connectors for popular applications, and wizards to walk users through complex workflows.

Budget considerations: If you have large-scale integration needs, you may opt for an enterprise license. However, most HIPs use a subscription model, with varying costs based on usage, number of integrations, or data volume. Cloud-native platforms may opt for a pay-as-you-go model. If a limited budget is a factor, you should consider a HIP with pre-built connectors to reduce development costs.  

Modern hybrid integration with CData Sync

CData Sync can help with all your data integration needs, including hybrid cloud implementations. It simplifies the process of connecting different data sources and automating the flow of data across systems. With over 200 connectors, CData Sync lets you quickly integrate data from any source, cloud application, or on-premises system and leverage that data to enhance your business. Try CData Sync for free.

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