'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.
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. iPaaS enables end users of the platform to integrate a variety of internal and external applications, services and data sources for at least one of the three main patterns of integration technology use: data consistency, multistep process and composite services. These integration use cases are most commonly implemented via intuitive low-code or no-code developer environments, though some vendors provide more complex developer tooling.
Gartner defines multienterprise collaboration networks (MCNs) as solutions that support a community of trading partners of any tier and type that need to coordinate and execute on business processes that extend across multiple enterprises. Gartner considers cloud-based MCNs to be a key technology for organizations of any industry, geography, size and maturity, implemented to coordinate, automate, orchestrate and transform an organization’s extended supply chain within the overall business ecosystem.