As a relative newcomer, Integration as a Service is perhaps not as well known as other "services" on the cloud which are fast replacing in-house IT setups. While the rest are used for facilitating the use of specific applications, IaaS allows companies to integrate all their data and applications. This includes everything on clouds and applications being accessed through SaaS providers, in addition to the company's on-site data.

The benefits include everything that usually comes with a migration to the cloud. It eliminates the IT resources and manpower required to achieve integration in-house. It also removes the cost of building up sufficient redundancy to enable scaling to match business and data growth. The company can reduce or expand their use of the available resources on the IaaS as and when required.

The development and availability of IaaS is a natural progression of the gradual shift of on-site data to the cloud. As companies go through the various stages associated with the migration, they find themselves stuck with data silos which cannot integrate with other systems used by the company. Some of the critical data is still safeguarded on-site, while other applications and data are scattered across different cloud-based providers.

It's a big enough ask for companies to track all this and roll with the changes while still keeping their IT systems operational. It would be just too much to add the burden of integrating all of it, considering the expertise and resources required for such a critical operation. Not many medium to small scale companies will find it feasible or even possible to do this in-house.

Besides, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, it's faster and cheaper to sign up with an IaaS provider who can immediately offer a professional and shiny new "wheel." It becomes the provider's job to integrate the company's various systems. This means the provider is not only offering a wheel for free, but is also taking the responsibility of fixing it to the car and getting things rolling.

The provider takes responsibility for upgrades and maintenance. They ensure login protocols, encryption measures and security are maintained as data moves through the tool. The provider also handles the actual process of integrating the company's applications and data.

Integration as a Service also offers additional data-centric advantages. Duplication of data entry is reduced and accuracy increases, because the human factor is removed from the equation. There will be no delays, oversights or errors when data is required to be moved or copied over from one application to another one. Since limitations related to location and time are eliminated, it improves user productivity.