Gartner defines the application programming interface (API) management market as the market for software to manage, govern and secure APIs. Organizations use APIs to modernize their architectures; APIs provide access to systems, services, partners and data services. API management software enables organizations to plan, deploy, secure, operate, version control and retire APIs, regardless of their size, region or industry.
'Application integration platforms enable independently designed applications, apps and services to work together. Key capabilities of application integration technologies include: • Communication functionality that reliably moves messages/data among endpoints. • Support for fundamental web and web services standards. • Functionality that dynamically binds consumer and provider endpoints. • Message validation, mapping, transformation and enrichment. • Orchestration. • Support for multiple interaction patterns, content-based routing and typed messages.
The data integration tools market comprises stand-alone software products that allow organizations to combine data from multiple sources, including performing tasks related to data access, transformation, enrichment and delivery. Data integration tools enable use cases such as data engineering, operational data integration, delivering modern data architectures, and enabling less-technical data integration. Data integration tools are procured by data and analytics (D&A) leaders and their teams for use by data engineers or less-technical users, such as business analysts or data scientists. These products are consumed as SaaS or deployed on-premises, in public or private cloud, or in hybrid configurations.
A digital integration hub (DIH) is an architectural pattern that centralizes data from various sources to provide a scalable, and real-time layer for modern digital applications, especially beneficial for enterprises looking to transform to digitized sales processes. It aggregates data from multiple systems of record into a low-latency, high-performance data store (the data management layer) which is then accessed by sales force automation (SFA), sales enablement and other tools via APIs or events. It also provides a central layer of abstraction that decouples applications from underlying systems, making it easier to integrate and manage new data sources and applications without disrupting existing systems. DIH provides sales teams with rich and responsive access to massive data sources, limits the fees paid to API providers and helps enable 24/7 operations enhancing customer experience through self service, digital commerce and loyalty.
Gartner defines enterprise low-code application platforms (LCAPs) as software platforms for the accelerated development and maintenance of applications, using model-driven development tools, generative AI and prebuilt component catalogs for the entire application’s technology stack. Enterprise LCAP features include support for the collaborative development of all application components; runtime environments for high performance, availability and scalability of applications; and application deployment and monitoring with detailed usage insights. Enterprise LCAP platforms feature governance controls and insights, self-service capabilities, APIs for integration with external DevOps tooling, success management with exhaustive technical documentation, training programs and a comprehensive global partner network. Enterprise LCAPs provide the foundation for developing a wide range of applications and application components with distributed data architectures, including complex multimodal front ends, business workflows, agentic AI and integration capabilities. The enterprise LCAP market is closely related to the citizen application development platform (CADP) market, as they both aim to address the use cases listed below. However, they are distinctively different in terms of the target audience and complexity of the applications built on the platform.
Gartner defines integration platform as a service (iPaaS) as a vendor-managed cloud service that enables end users to implement integrations between applications, services and data sources, both internal and external to their organization.
Master data management (MDM) is a technology-enabled business discipline where business and IT organizations work together for the uniformity, accuracy, stewardship, semantic consistency and accountability of enterprises’ shared master data assets. Organizations use MDM solutions as part of an MDM strategy, which should be part of a wider enterprise information management (EIM) strategy. An MDM strategy potentially encompasses management of multiple master data domains (e.g., customer, citizen, product, “thing,” asset, person/party, supplier, location, and financial master data domains). Data and analytics (D&A) leaders procure MDM tools for data engineers or less-technical users, such as data stewards.