Most of today’s applications are deployed in distributed environments and through diverse service providers. So that these applications work, each component within the entire application’s stack, from microservices, storage, cloud computing providers, infrastructure, etc., need to talk effortlessly.

But connecting these disparate systems from different providers can be a challenging and laborious process.

“Applications are really driven by integration today, so, if you want faster applications with higher quality, you really need to think about delivering integrations faster with higher quality,” said Savio Rodrigues (pictured), vice president of integration and application platform offering management at IBM. “And things get really interesting when you apply AI and the automation is driven by real-world data that’s specific to your organization in a continuous feedback loop — we like to call closed-loop — and that’s continuously driving efficiency.”

Rodrigues spoke with Lisa Martin, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the recent IBM Think event. They discussed automation vs. hyper-automation, automating integrations, closed-loop and multi-style automation. (* Disclosure below.)

Automating integrations

Automating integrations is key to better business intelligence and productivity. If done correctly, it can help create app integration flows that will ultimately reduce the manual effort and the need for more coding and integration experts. 

“So, from an IBM standpoint, we feel that every integration must be automated, closed-loop and multi-style with AI that’s informed by your company-specific data to continue to improve so that you end up getting integrations faster. But they’re also better,” Rodrigues said.

He highlighted the importance of using this automated, closed-loop and multi-style integration strategy. First and most importantly, the automation is powered by AI and fed with the right type of data. In a closed-loop strategy, the real-world operational data feeds the AI to help make better and smoother integrations, he explained.

“You also have to be thinking about evolving those integrations in a closed-loop fashion do you’re continuously making those integrations better with AI that’s powered by your operational data that’s specific to your company,” Rodrigues stated.

This closed-loop helps identify potential internal issues, provides recommendations and drives continuous improvement. In addition, integrations must also be multi-style, where rather than using the one-size-fits-all approach to integration, the multi-style approach focuses on drawing together all the combinations of integration capabilities.

“The old approach that integration vendors used to have in terms of this style of integration fits all problems is the long approach. And instead, what we start seeing today is customers are using multiple forms of integration to solve a specific business problem. So they’re using Kafka, APIs, messaging and the iPad,” Rodrigues concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of IBM Think. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for IBM Think. Neither IBM, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE