Want to move from on-premise systems to cloud-based solutions? Or utilize both environments? You’ll need a hybrid integration strategy to bridge the two.
Many businesses need to effect digital transformations, especially if they’re reliant on legacy hardware (and/or software-based solutions) and old middleware platforms (like ESB/SOA products). Modernizing legacy systems and middleware is necessary - but comes with challenges.
Hybrid cloud integration architecture is designed to address these challenges, making your modernization plans significantly easier to carry out while meeting your business integration needs throughout the transition.
What makes enterprise hybrid cloud solutions attractive? Cloud environments are, by nature, highly scalable. To make room for new workloads, all you need to do is purchase more cloud space. Additionally:
If you’re interested in creating a hybrid cloud migration strategy but are worried about how to effect a seamless integration approach, you’re not alone. That’s why we’ve put together these tips. They’ll give you all the hybrid cloud migration help you need, allowing you to focus on pulling your integration strategy together without worrying about whether it’s efficient enough.
Before you can start optimizing your hybrid approach, you must take the time to create it. Extra care during the design stage is crucial. Consider the hybrid cloud approach from as many angles as you can, making sure it’s realistic, attainable, and effective for your business.
This is a key point that bears repeating: your approach needs to work for your business, not just anyone.
If there are particular endpoints your company focuses on over others, for example, those need to take priority in the design. Likewise, you’ve got to actively account for your company’s realistic integration capabilities, rather than leaving those to be an afterthought.
It’s worthwhile incorporating a detailed exploration of your business requirements into the design phase. This makes it easier to ensure you’re designing around your needs rather than bending the design toward these at a later stage.
Are you planning to use an ad hoc integrator, or are you focused on a broader solution or platform that lets you do lots of different things?
Whatever the case, it’s worth familiarizing yourself with the alternatives. If anything goes wrong in the implementation of your plans, you’ll be glad to have contingencies in place and pre-researched.
That includes making note of any providers that look promising, as well as ones you’d rather avoid.
Now you’ve outlined the hybrid approach you want to take and considered alternatives to your plans, it’s time to evaluate the hybrid cloud infrastructure options at your disposal. As before, the needs of your business should take center stage.
If your company has specific requirements for future cloud-based solutions, make sure your chosen infrastructure can support these. Your evaluation should give you a clear idea of whether this is the case.
All hybrid integration platforms are different, and each one comes with pros and cons. Use this list of must-haves as a baseline to narrow down your choices. (Note: It’s crucial to consider how you plan on using your hybrid integration platform. You may have requirements to add to this list.)
Data management should be as easy as possible, so look for a platform that supports your app, data, and B2B integration needs. These three features make it easier to get set up and transition quickly and smoothly from on-premises to cloud-based solutions. The simpler the integration process is, the better—seamless integration is the end goal, after all.
If you’re using legacy solutions, it’s likely employees are completing workflows across multiple disparate apps that don’t talk to each other, meaning files and data are scattered across multiple locations. To modernize all that content and bring it together, look for a solution that offers robust file transfer management options.
Ideally, the platform should have secure file transfer management that’s compatible with every app and location you need to transfer files from. This allows you to use a single solution to gather data, and gives you a clear overview of all the files you’re dealing with.
An advantage of cloud-based solutions is that they come with plenty of native features. For your transition, your platform of choice should offer Legacy Modernization features that take your business to the next level.
For example, if your company uses an app like Salesforce or JD Edwards, a solution with a built-in version of your app lets you access familiar, useful features without constantly switching between apps.
Look for a hybrid integration platform with FLC management capability. Ideally, the platform will serve you through every step of the integration and implementation process, so you only need to rely on a single solution to take care of all your hybrid integration needs. You don’t want to be managing multiple integration platforms on top of everything else!
Look for a provider that is interested in and set up for your success. Ask questions about the onboarding process. You need to know you’ll be onboarded quickly and simply, and given everything you need to succeed.
OpenLegacy, for example, offers a simple three-step process for onboarding that gives you a complete overview of the things you need to know to use the platform to its full potential.
We have a simple, very fast three-step onboarding process that gives you everything you need to start using the platform to its full potential.
This is the only solution on the market that offers enterprises a true end-to-end “API factory” for creating digital services. You won’t find that anywhere else.
OpenLegacy offers instant integration options for your core, on-prem, and legacy systems too. That means you can expose important systems to the cloud right away.
Thanks to our streamlined and simplified approach to accessing data from backend systems, you’ll be able to accelerate your time-to-market speeds by at least 10 times.
Hybrid integration platform (HIP) products connect and generate cloud-based services to and from on-premise applications. HIP solutions leave the data and applications where they currently exist, both on-prem and in the cloud, and leverage the integration between them based on user scenarios.
Openlegacy's B2B solution makes it easier for the integration specialist to parse metadata from on-premise systems and use templates to generate standard Java, .NET, C#, Node.js, Python, Kotlin (and more) code, or even low to no code at all.
OpenLegacy’s HIP is ideal for organizations with business-critical data in both on-premise applications and in the cloud, or organizations which have all their data in the cloud and need an on-premise-focused solution. HIP solutions aren’t new, but products vary in how much they help or inhibit a true HIP process. These include:
These solutions focus on cloud applications exclusively and therefore need a separate HIP that supports on-premise systems.
This solution uses data integration to move data into the cloud but ignores a critical asset — the application business logic.
These types of solutions manage APIs, but their integration tooling adds middleware. Integration specialists must have domain expertise in both the on-premise system and middleware.
Benefits | OpenLegacy Support | |
---|---|---|
Flexible deployment model | Users decide where to place integration: public or private cloud | Generation of microservices for easy deployment |
Support for integration scenarios | Support for translating green screens, reading metadata, converting DB interfaces, etc. | Pre-built platform connectors support various different scenarios including screens, metadata, DBs, etc. |
Agile approach | Flexibility in developing integration based on urgency | Automated API creation makes development fast and doesn’t require specialized platform knowledge |
OpenLegacy’s microservices generation makes it a great HIP, but we’re so much more. OpenLegacy is a complete HIP solution. We deploy the microservices inside Docker containers and provide built-in JUnit testing. Here’s how that helps:
Challenge | Solution |
---|---|
On-premise platforms are expensive to change | Create a microservice using a popular language, java, that calls the current legacy interface |
Expose APIs incrementally to limit the need for change and data breaches | Microservices expose only the data needed for specific scenarios |
Allow integration teams to work in parallel | Microservices are small, self-contained services that team can work on in parallel |
Develop APIs with optimized connections to the on-premise system | A microservice with a direct connection is optimized |
Support DevOps processes by making the APIs self-contained | Microservices packages APIs for easy deployment inside containers |
Here are some of the most commonly asked questions associated with hybrid integration platforms.
A hybrid integration platform is a tool that helps companies modernize in place or transition from older on-premises technology to modern cloud-based solutions. It’s designed to support businesses throughout their journey, ensuring the switch happens smoothly and without creating a negative impact on business operations.
All your data and application logic needs to be exposed or transferred from your old systems to your new, cloud-based solutions. Hybrid integration platforms make this easier, and the best ones ensure it’s seamless.
While the hybrid integration platform market is full of choices, some solutions will be more useful to your business than others. For more insight into the factors that separate good solutions from great ones, see our earlier section on the subject.
A hybrid integration platform is a tool that helps companies modernize in place or transition from older on-premises technology to modern cloud-based solutions. It’s designed to support businesses throughout their journey, ensuring the switch happens smoothly and without creating a negative impact on business operations.
All your data and application logic needs to be exposed or transferred from your old systems to your new, cloud-based solutions. Hybrid integration platforms make this easier, and the best ones ensure it’s seamless.
While the hybrid integration platform market is full of choices, some solutions will be more useful to your business than others. For more insight into the factors that separate good solutions from great ones, see our earlier section on the subject.
A hybrid integration platform is a tool that helps companies modernize in place or transition from older on-premises technology to modern cloud-based solutions. It’s designed to support businesses throughout their journey, ensuring the switch happens smoothly and without creating a negative impact on business operations.
All your data and application logic needs to be exposed or transferred from your old systems to your new, cloud-based solutions. Hybrid integration platforms make this easier, and the best ones ensure it’s seamless.
While the hybrid integration platform market is full of choices, some solutions will be more useful to your business than others. For more insight into the factors that separate good solutions from great ones, see our earlier section on the subject.
A hybrid integration platform is a tool that helps companies modernize in place or transition from older on-premises technology to modern cloud-based solutions. It’s designed to support businesses throughout their journey, ensuring the switch happens smoothly and without creating a negative impact on business operations.
All your data and application logic needs to be exposed or transferred from your old systems to your new, cloud-based solutions. Hybrid integration platforms make this easier, and the best ones ensure it’s seamless.
While the hybrid integration platform market is full of choices, some solutions will be more useful to your business than others. For more insight into the factors that separate good solutions from great ones, see our earlier section on the subject.