Your organization utilizes multiple applications to perform different tasks on a daily basis. However, certain conditions might require integrating these applications to automate complex tasks. Integrating applications can enable you to optimize operations, saving resources and time.
This article explains application integration, some common examples, and the best practices for performing the integration process.
Application integration is the process of connecting different systems and applications designed for specific purposes together to optimize workflow efficiency. Enabling applications to communicate allows you to modernize infrastructure and perform agile business operations.
In traditional business approaches, applications are siloed—disconnected and operating independently. This creates a problem when a scenario arrives where you must utilize multiple applications together to perform specific tasks, requiring manual intervention.
However, for modern businesses, application integration has become a part of daily operations, reducing the barriers between on-premise systems and cloud-based applications.
The key purpose of application integration is to streamline application communication, resulting in enhanced performance and efficient time utilization while reducing associated costs.
Here are a few benefits of application integration:
By now, you must have understood what application integration is. However, there might be a common question that might arise along your application development journey: How is application integration different from data integration?
Let’s look at a brief table demonstrating the common differences between application and data integration.
Application Integration
Data Integration
Connects different applications to optimize workflow efficiency.
Integrates data from dispersed sources into a single repository.
Seamless communication and data exchange between applications for collaborative work.
The ultimate goal is to create data-driven insights for better business decision-making.
Time of Execution
Mostly real-time or near real-time to support business processes.
It can be any of the batch-oriented or near real-time.
Passing lead information from marketing applications like Hubspot to sales management platforms like Salesforce.
Migrating data from databases like MySQL or PostgreSQL to a data warehouse like Snowflake.
