Integration continues to be an important business objective for all enterprises. In fact, since the introduction of cloud platforms, there have been even more integration points than ever before. The complexity of hybrid and multi-clouds has increased with security and performance requirements. The ability to securely implement event processing and APIs is paramount. The transfer of data and transformation and routing are extremely important as the systems of records and applications are now located in multiple data centers.

As you already know from Chapter 2, Introducing API Connect, API Connect was re-architected to run in containers and be cloud-ready. Integration tooling such as App Connect Enterprise (ACE) has also changed to support microservices and faster delivery times. Couple those with support for high-speed data transfer, event processing using Confluent/Kafka, and MQ messaging and you have assembled a cloud integration platform.

Note: v10.0.1.5

API Connect on Cloud Pak for Integration provides the capability for API Connect to provide runtime security for Kafka topics using the Event Gateway Service.

This platform can modernize your on-premise applications so you can now develop on-premise or in the cloud of your choice. Those are the capabilities of Cloud Pak for Integration. But then, what are the motivators to utilize Cloud Pak for Integration? We will review those next.

Hybrid Cloud modernization motivation

Change is perhaps one of the biggest motivators and the pandemic certainly introduced change. Whether it was working from home, changes in logistics, closed borders, supply chain disruptions, or all of the above, businesses needed to make difficult decisions to survive.

Change can also bring opportunity and many organizations took this opportunity to focus their attention on factors they desired and made them directives. Whether they were new or existing executives, the following topics ranked high on their lists:

• Agility: The business wanted to enable more rapid innovation that was guided by needs (especially during the pandemic).
• Resilience: The business required continuous availability that required less hands-on and more capacity. You might relate this to increased virus testing capabilities.
• Scalability: This relates to the need for scaling the business upon demand with limitless capacity. Think of home deliveries or increased online ordering capacity.
• Cost: With fewer people in the office or data center, taking advantage of cloud platforms.
• Portability: Can’t be locked down. Need to be able to move between clouds if capabilities or costs dictate better options.

When business conditions like the ones mentioned are the motivating factors, a platform like CP4I makes total sense. Figure 16.4 shows the various integration styles that comprise CP4I:

Figure 16.4 – Cloud Pak for Integration

As you can see, CP4I runs on multiple clouds as well as on-premise. This is accomplished by utilizing Red Hat OpenShift, which you learned about in the preceding section. CP4I is built using containers so agility, as well as scalability and resilience, are omnipresent. Portability is not an issue with container technology and OpenShift, so given the executive wish list, all the boxes are checked.

Without going into too much detail, the following are some of the highlights of CP4I:

• CP4I has a Platform Navigator component. It has centralized management and control over all the CP4I components.
• CP4I has an Asset Repository capability. It improves development agility with the reuse of integration assets.
• It offers Common Services. We can get logging, metering, monitoring, and many other key foundational services with IBM Common Services.
• All the functionality you have learned about API Connect is included here.
• It integrates all your business data and applications more quickly and is portable across any cloud.
• With a minimal ramp-up time, your existing on-premise App Connect developers can build reliable integrations using the skills they learned with App Connect Enterprise on CP4I.
• Send large files (SFTP) and datasets virtually anywhere, reliably, and at maximum speed.
• Utilize MQ to create persistent, security-rich connections between your on-premises and cloud environments.

Note

The added value of using CP4I beyond just API Connect is the ability for the enterprise to choose between a set of solution capabilities to build a complete solution and let API Connect be the method to connect the implementations.

From an API Connect standpoint, you just revisited OpenShift and Cloud Pak for Integration to round out your complete understanding of what motivates your organization and what it may be looking for in future modernization efforts.

Now that we have a better understanding of platforms such as OpenShift and Cloud Pak for Integration, transformation doesn’t end here. Many people know that Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a major force in cloud platforms. Let’s now introduce you to another game-changer that meets one of the executive goals mentioned in this section—improved resilience and agility using artificial intelligence.