On a regular basis, a question like this enters my inbox:
“Hey @Michael, wanted to get your insights. What would you say are some of the top trends, from an integration perspective, that you believe will have the greatest impact over the next twelve to eighteen months for enterprises?”
This question in particular lights me up and stirs my technology passions. There are three trends I immediately think of: the first is automation.
Top integration trends
These days, much is being said about automation and its ability to eliminate manual efforts, streamline business processes and data flows, and boost the capabilities of people. Already proven in other areas of the corporate world, automation within business disciplines is experiencing an upward trajectory with adoption accelerating at a rapid pace. Enterprise automation is poised for a major impact across a wide range of companies – of all sizes, small and large, and in every industry. For these reasons, automation tops my list of important trends.
The other two trends (to round out my top three) are the growth in machine learning, AI-powered integrations, and the ever-increasing need to empower business groups at scale – with intelligent, self-service, no-code technologies. Machine learning and AI-powered integration is about more than simply providing these technologies as a bolt-on capability of an existing integration product, available on the side for customers to use if they wish. But rather, it’s about building AI/ML directly and natively into the overall user experience, with the underlying technology quietly assisting and improving at every turn, thereby simplifying and accelerating the integration process for all. This is a key enabler of the trend toward business group empowerment at massive scale – thousands upon thousands of self-service users.
Why I wrote the book
But as I said, the trend question lights me up every time. I’ve been asked enough times, from a variety of different angles, that it inspired me to create an easy-to-understand reference guide that explores the topic of enterprise automation, what it is all about, and how organizations can adopt it and realize its benefits. When it’s necessary for a reference guide to cater to an audience of varying knowledge levels, from novice to expert, what reference guide is better than the ‘For Dummies’ brand?
Over time, most companies will benefit directly from automating business processes, end-to-end, across the enterprise. However, even if your company is not yet ready to embrace enterprise automation or initiate an automation project, I believe it is highly likely you will still benefit. There are countless, non-automation, business opportunities, use cases, and integration challenges that all companies face, which can be addressed by the intelligent application, data integration, and self-service technologies that are core to achieving enterprise automation.
Inside the guide
Thus, our new Enterprise Automation For Dummies guide explores industry trends, discusses how to intelligently integrate the multiple applications that make up common business processes, and shares insights into how to flow operational and analytical data between these applications and data repository endpoints to accelerate business results. Most importantly, the guide illustrates how to empower people, technical and non-technical, at a huge scale with self-service, while ensuring IT maintains central control and governance as needed.
In collaboration with Wiley Publishing, this guide is conceived and written by me, and not by a third-party contract writer translating a datasheet, as you will often see with other, non-commercial For Dummies guides. Contributing to this effort is our respected founder and CEO, Gaurav Dhillon, a data and integration industry visionary and serial entrepreneur, several experts on our SnapLogic executive team, and members of my product marketing team who compiled a dozen supporting use cases and reference diagram examples.
Next steps
Enterprise automation is the future of integration. Consider the Enterprise Automation For Dummies as an easy-to-understand, intelligent integration and automation reference guide that will further your knowledge, provide real-world case study examples, and offer practical tips and steps to help accelerate business results. I invite you to download it today and share your thoughts.
