The market for data integration tools consists of stand-alone software products that enable organizations to combine data from multiple sources and perform tasks related to data access, transformation, enrichment and delivery. They enable use cases such as data engineering, delivering modern data architectures, self-service data integration, operational data integration and supporting AI projects. Data management leaders procure data integration tools for their teams, including data engineers and data architects, or for other users, such as business analysts or data scientists. These products are primarily consumed as SaaS or deployed on-premises, in public or private cloud, or in hybrid configurations.
Gartner defines integration platform as a service (iPaaS) as a vendor-managed cloud service that enables end users to implement integrations between applications, services and data sources, both internal and external to their organization. iPaaS enables end users of the platform to integrate a variety of internal and external applications, services and data sources for at least one of the three main patterns of integration technology use: data consistency, multistep process and composite services. These integration use cases are most commonly implemented via intuitive low-code or no-code developer environments, though some vendors provide more complex developer tooling.