Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to transform nearly every aspect of agency operations. But to take advantage of generative AI and related solutions, agencies need to get their data under control.
The problem is that agencies have spent the better part of the past two decades integrating point-to-point solutions to address point-in-time problems. But as computing has evolved, with agencies continually introducing new systems and handling increasingly massive amounts of data while expanding to cloud, mobile and edge environments, they’ve lost the ability to easily access large swaths of data.
The result is a “chaos of connectivity” — a morass of systems that are integrated to an extent, but don’t talk to one another.
“Initially, these things were pretty simple and fast to implement,” said Darryn Graham, Solutions Architect at Software AG Government Solutions, an enterprise integration company. “But over time the complexity became exponential. With the size of the agencies in the federal government, this approach is not scalable.”
Beyond Point to Point
One way agencies have attempted to work around this chaos is to deploy integration platform as a service (iPaaS), which is a cloud-based platform for managing integration between various software-as-a-service applications.
The problem is that iPaaS often sacrifices power for ease of use or may be unable to scale mission-critical integrations across geographies, IT environments and complex business ecosystems, resulting in multiple platforms — and continued chaos.
Agencies need a platform that addresses all their integration patterns, including data, applications, application programming interfaces (APIs), business-to-business transactions and event-based integration. That’s the role of Super iPaaS.
It provides a unified interface of integrations across the enterprise, including hybrid multi-cloud hosting environments, geographies, user identities and teams. Super iPaaS is managed centrally by an integration center of excellence, giving agencies the ability to integrate anything, anywhere, in any way they want.
“That single pane of glass is what the Super iPaaS concept is really about,” said Fabien Sanglier, Chief Solutions Architect with Software AG Government Solutions. “It’s that unified view. You can integrate pretty much anything — and everything — everywhere.”
Core Benefits
Super iPaaS offers three core benefits: Agility: The ability to deploy anywhere and enable the seamless flow of information, allowing agencies to react in real time to changing demands or requirements.
Productivity: A centralized interface and real-time access to data allows users to get more done quickly, increasing productivity and lessening the burden on the IT staff.
Governance: A centralized view provides end-to-end visibility and observability across transactions throughout the enterprise, which simplifies compliance with the full range of regulatory requirements.
In short, it eliminates the chaos of connectivity. “Using Super iPaaS finally liberates the data sitting in existing systems,” Graham said.
This article appeared in our guide, “Agencies of the Future: How to Break Down Barriers to Growth.” For more about how governments are embracing change, download it here:
