Are you looking for a solution, or just an API endpoint provider?

1. What are your integration needs?
2. Real-time or batch?
3. Transaction volume
4. Cost
5. Strategy

In this post we ask “What are your integration needs?”:

Most companies that provide integration services are very good at providing access to API endpoints to various systems, however many do not do the work of hooking these up for you nor do they provide you with advice on choices and methodologies.

This type of integration provider tends to flaunt their vast collection of endpoints while leaving out details on other critical factors of the integration such as:

Error reporting – what are your options, how do you configure, are errors reported in real-time? Does error reporting cost extra?

Service execution layer – must it be cloud-based? Is it configurable?

Reporting – most integration companies support historical reporting, even if they have no other reports. A good integration company should also have reports for KPI’s, Transactions (with details available), Real-time monitoring, and Real-time reporting (what happened in the last minute, last hour, last day, etc.). What reports will you expect?

Service up-time guarantees – what controls, methodologies or mechanisms do they have to guarantee that your integration services are always running? What happens if they suddenly stop working? Look for a good answer here, with “real-time” as part of the answer.

What is their UI?  If they are an endpoint provider, will you be doing your own mapping and transformations?  Do they support a common tool like Visual Studio?  Are you forced to use their clunky web interface?  Will your development team need to learn a new tool – adding time and costs to the project (and possible frustration for your developers)?