iPaaS for professional developers

Developing new integrations in the cloud is easy to do with web-based, visual drag-and-drop tools. But these don’t always offer the full range of integration, debugging and testing capabilities needed by professional developers. webMethods Integration Cloud offers the ability to use Designer, Software AG’s full-featured professional development environment, to develop and deploy integrations into Software AG’s webMethods Integration Cloud. This model is commonly referred to as "lift & shift" since it enables users to easily lift existing integrations and shift them to the cloud. Choose from predefined cloud solution landscapes. Let Software AG handle landscape provisioning, deploy the integrations, manage fixes, patches and upgrades, and provide CI/CD support in the cloud. Then explore out-of-the-box monitoring dashboards to track solution health and Flow service behavior as well as alerts. Professional developers now have a direct path to a multi-function, multi- cloud iPaaS.

Issue 4, 2018	Download PDF

Tug of war: cloud or no cloud?

Almost all organizations are investigating or already leveraging the cloud for off-loading IT systems. However, deploying integrations to the cloud can be complex. Working with cloud platform providers, installing and maintaining software versions, scaling for demand, and keeping applications up to date is time- consuming and error-prone.

Developing new integrations in the cloud can be easier, but doesn’t offer the richness of tools like Software AG Designer for creating, orchestrating, testing and debugging sophisticated business logic. Professional developers who create high-performing, complex applications with webMethods Integration Server require the advanced capabilities offered by the EclipseTM-based Designer tool. Many of these developers prefer to deploy on premise so they can use development tools that meet their needs.

To add to the challenge, most organizations have a large number of existing integrations that are already deployed. If new projects are deployed in the cloud but older integrations continue to reside on-premises, IT must work in two different modes.

The ideal solution would be to have a professional development tool that can “lift & shift“ your existing integrations to the cloud AND create new integrations in the cloud without creating additional load on the IT organization.

To address this need, Software AG has created a cloud deployment capability that allows integration developers to:

Develop new integrations, APIs and business logic in Designer.

Incorporate the capabilities of the Integration Server and its built- in services as well as data and cloud connectors. Then deploy to the Integration Cloud by selecting a predefined deployment landscape. The landscape is automatically provisioned, and your integrations, APIs, and business logic are deployed with it.

Deploy existing on-premises integrations and APIs from Designer to the cloud.

Choose the services and packages you want and deploy them on demand to a cloud-based landscape. Once they are deployed in the cloud, Software AG handles everything from automatic upgrades to fix/patch management and CI/CD support. Cloud- based monitoring dashboards enable users to track solution health and Flow service behavior.

Integrate with on-premises resources

This is done by using a VPN tunnel for secure transmission of your sensitive data. It is critical to be able to access core business data that isn’t migrating to the cloud. Users can set up a VPN for on-premises data connectivity to defined endpoints. Once you’ve deployed your integration in the selected landscape, configure it to access the endpoints you’ve made available.

Manage application staging and migration in the cloud

The deployed environment in the cloud automatically supports migrating from one stage to another. The user chooses the destination stage, configures the landscape, then simply pulls the assets from previous stage to the current stage and sets the appropriate values for configuration assets like passwords and endpoints. Updates can be easily deployed to the same landscape.

webMethods Integration Cloud enables professional integration and API developers to easily create, publish and deploy their solutions to a fully managed, scalable cloud environment.

Five steps to deploying your integration in the cloud

1. License: You must have a tenant in Integration Cloud and a license for cloud deployment. VPN connectivity to on-premises data may require an additional privilege.

2. Designer setup: Make sure you download a new version of Designer to pick up the new features available for cloud deployment. From the Designer, open the Preferences and select Software AG->Integration Cloud. This is where you will enter the connection URLs and authentication details for your Integration Cloud tenants. Each one can have a unique name.

3. Services and destination: From the Package Navigator, the context menu will now have a selection to Deploy to Cloud. This brings up a wizard for publishing (e.g., lifting & shifting) assets to the cloud. Once your assets are selected, you choose a preconfigured Integration Cloud tenant connection for the destination.

Figure 1: Deploying services

4. Landscape: Next you choose from a set of landscape deployment patterns. The patterns range from minimal configurations for simple deployments up to production- ready configurations that include clustered Integration Servers, Universal Messaging and Terracotta In-Memory Data Management.

Figure 2: Selecting a landscape

5. Scale: Decide how many Integration Server servers, Universal Messaging servers, and Terracotta servers you want and specify the CPU and memory characteristics of the solution.

Using a Kubernetes®/Docker®-based management layer, the selected solution landscape is deployed and managed automatically, and your services and packages are deployed onto that landscape. You can now use the Integration Cloud developer UI to browse your assets in the Blockly interface. Maintain the health of your solution through built-in infrastructure and flow monitoring and alerting. Fixes and upgrades are handled automatically as part of the managed service, with high availability and CI/CD support. And of course the Integration Cloud enables you to scale vertically and horizontally as your performance demands increase.

Monitoring: What’s happening with my solutions?

In order to understand what’s happening with your solutions, it’s useful to monitor the services and integrations that comprise them as well as the underlying infrastructure that can affect their performance. Integration Cloud now offers out-of-the-box

predefined monitoring dashboards. At the highest level, there is a dashboard showing overall KPI status and alerts for all solutions hosted on that Integration Cloud.

Figure 3: Monitoring Dashboard

There are also predefined KPI-based dashboards for each runtime (Integration Server, Universal Messaging and Terracotta), an alerts dashboard, and a dashboard for monitoring flows. The KPIs that are collected in Prometheus can also be accessed via a REST endpoint for users to do additional analysis if desired.

Conclusion

For existing Integration Server developers who want to easily re- host or “lift & shift” their existing integrations to the cloud without the work of setting up servers, installing software, exporting and importing their packages, and managing cloud containers, Integration Cloud is the right option. It’s easy to scale, and you can monitor your infrastructure and integrations with built-in KPI- based dashboards.

It’s also a great option for developers who want to leave their existing integrations on premises and build new integrations in the cloud using the full capabilities of Designer. It’s already linked to your on-premises test tools, and you can continue to design, orchestrate, and debug in the same development environment while deploying locally or in the cloud.

With Software AG managing the cloud deployment and operations, professional developers can focus on what they do best: building solutions to enable the business.