Companies need data from disparate systems to be shared among those systems to enable workflow processes, expedite data analysis, and inform business planning. Software integrations are the most straightforward way to share that data.
The world of software integrations has evolved a lot. Over a decade ago, the first vendors entered the enterprise iPaaS market. Then, we saw the introduction of unified APIs. Finally, the embedded iPaaS for B2B SaaS apps was defined as separate from them both.
These tools and others were developed and refined to help companies solve increasingly complex integration challenges. And integrations aren't going away any time soon.
As the integration space matures and changes, here are five trends to consider.
1. The proliferation of SaaS apps will continue to drive the need for more integrations
There are more than 17,000 SaaS companies in the US, and the global SaaS market is projected to expand by more than 200% from now until 2030.
Why so many apps? In part, this is due to the democratization of app development. As the barriers to building apps continue to drop, it only takes a handful of people to turn an idea into an app that competes in the global marketplace.
Today's average company relies on 112 SaaS apps. That number, which had been rising year over year, declined for the first time in more than a decade as many companies cut costs by consolidating the number of apps they were using.
At the same time, we have had an explosion of AI-related SaaS apps, though it's difficult to determine how many of those apps will last and how many are simply taking advantage of the current excitement.
Meanwhile, demand for integrations remains high. Recent data from our customers (SaaS companies who need integrations with their customers' other apps) shows that 53% of them plan to build 10 or more integrations within the coming year, with some planning to build as many as 50 integrations in that time.
2. Integrations provided by SaaS apps out of the box will increase
Tied into the previous trend and companies' increasing reliance on the best-of-breed approach to selecting their apps, SaaS vendors realize they must bring their apps to the market with the integrations that customers expect.
As a result, modern SaaS apps and web services use integrations extensively. Without them, apps turn into data silos – and data silos make life more complicated for your customers. As a result, these native integrations have become table stakes.
IT teams increasingly say, "We could build these integrations internally, but it makes sense for any new SaaS apps we get to have integrations built in."
A few years ago, it was common to see new apps appear on the market without any integrations. And while this still happens, it's less common than it once was.
Initial go-to-market plans may not include integrations, but SaaS teams need answers for how and when they'll provide integrations for their customers.
In fact, in a recent survey, SaaS companies noted their customers used an average of 5 integrations between their product and other apps.
This trend will only grow stronger as vendors strive to capture sufficient market share to make themselves viable long-term.
3. Integration solutions will continue to evolve to serve specific needs
Building integrations from scratch is a time-tested approach. But, in most cases, there are more efficient ways to build SaaS integrations.
Companies can now use one of several types of platforms to create the integrations their users and their customers need.
Here are a few of the most common integration platforms available today.
- Enterprise iPaaS – This type of solution enables the development, deployment, and support of integrations inside your company. This platform connects apps via integrations between internal business systems. It is primarily used by IT personnel, though non-technical teams may also use a low-code/no-code integration designer.
- Workflow Automation – While this broader term could encompass all the other categories, it can also be a category to itself. Tools such as Zapier fit this category better than any other. Zapier is a platform that can be used for integrations inside and outside the enterprise but is primarily the choice of individuals who need to integrate common apps from their desktops.
- Embedded iPaaS – This set of tools enables a software company to quickly build reusable, configurable integrations from its product to any app in any software category and deliver them to its customers as a seamless part of its product. Technical and non-technical teams use it to create product integrations for B2B SaaS companies.
- Unified API – This platform connects several APIs in a standard software category to a single API to simplify the integration process. B2B SaaS companies use unified APIs for integrations with multiple apps in a single horizontal category (example: HRIS). Unified APIs are used by technical and non-technical teams.
The products in each category will continue to evolve as the SaaS market expands and companies and customers continue to develop new use cases in pursuit of software integration.
And the categories will continue to develop as more solutions enter the market. We may even see completely new solutions attempting to address previously unknown categories or market sectors.
4. Integration solutions will need to support low-code and high-code development
The introduction of low-code/no-code tools for building integrations was revolutionary. This advancement made integration development accessible for a whole new group of users: non-devs. These non-devs often use drag-and-drop integration designers to connect Well-known App A with Well-known App B. In this scenario, the low-code approach is sufficient.
Then there are the technical non-devs who need to create integrations. These are the same people who are comfortable using Crystal Reports or Power BI to build reports. While not comfortable writing code from scratch, they are willing and able to go beyond a low-code integration UI to change inputs and outputs, adjust configurations, and, yes, even tweak a bit of code occasionally.
Finally, we have devs accustomed to using IDEs to write code. Not only are they uncomfortable using a low-code UI, but many believe that it throttles their productivity. As a result, they want an integration build experience that lets them write code from start to finish.
The key here is that a single SaaS company may need to build integrations with one of these approaches, or it may need to use all of them. In many cases, the integration team may not know what exact approach it needs to use until team members have sat down, reviewed the integrations they need to build, and figured out what resources will be required.
The market for low-code integration development is here to stay, but high-code (sometimes called code-native) integration tools are also essential to address all the real-world SaaS integration scenarios.
5. AI will play an increasing role in solving the integration puzzle
We see how AI is being used today and anticipate that AI interactions with integrations will only increase.
The number of AI-based companies is quickly expanding, with some putting the number as high as 87,000 worldwide. While many of these companies are staying alive because of our current fascination with all things AI, some of them will go on to produce real value in the market.
AI systems such as Azure OpenAI and OpenAI are currently used within integrations as endpoints. And, of course, the key to AI is lots of data, so we see integrations being used to collect massive amounts of data for training AIs.
In addition, some low-code integration tools have started incorporating AI prompts into the integration build process, providing users with real-time interactive support.
AI systems will become better at predicting integration patterns and more helpful in assisting with integration development. AIs will likely find their integration niche as tools that remove the monotony from creating integrations.
How will you provide value to your customers?
Trends come and go. But your B2B SaaS customers will be here for a very long time – if they keep receiving value from your product. One of the ways to provide value is by ensuring that your product has essential integrations available on day one.
Using an embedded iPaaS like Prismatic allows you to provide integrations directly within your app, ensuring that your customers don't need to go anywhere else to view, select, and activate all the integrations they need between your product and the other apps they use.
Schedule a demo, and let us show you how Prismatic can help you create integration value for your customers and increase product stickiness.
