Gartner Hype Cycle for Cloud Platform Services 2022 Positions Two Technologies to Reach the Plateau of Productivity in Less Than Two Years

Global iPaas Revenue to Grow 18.5% in 2022

Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) and low-code application platform (LCAP) will climb the Plateau of Productivity in less than two years, according to the Gartner, Inc. Hype Cycle for Cloud Platform Services, 2022.

The Plateau of Productivity highlights technologies where the real-world benefits of the technologies are demonstrated and accepted. Growing numbers of organisations feel comfortable with the reduced levels of risk, and the rapid growth phase of adoption begins (see Figure 1).

“The shift to the cloud is boosting growth in the iPaaS market,” said Yefim Natis, distinguished VP analyst at Gartner. “iPaaS has moved to early mainstream adoption globally, reaching 20% to 50% of the global target audience who will use iPaaS offerings to integrate not only applications and data, but also ecosystems, APIs, and business processes.”

Worldwide iPaas end user spending is projected to total $5.6 billion in 2022, up 18.5% from 2021. Overall, global public cloud services spending is projected to total $498 billion in 2022, an increase of 21% year-over-year.

Figure 1: Hype Cycle for Cloud Platform Services, 2022

Innovations such as blockchain oracles and edge PaaS are plotted on the Hype Cycle for Cloud Platform Services based on market interest and time to commercial maturity, as of July 2022. Source: Gartner (August 2022)

iPaaS not only attracts large organisations, but also midsize and small organisations with its ease of access, versatility, and low initial cost. “Organisations choose iPaaS to support rapid integration and automation of SaaS applications with other SaaS and on-premise applications and data sources. More recently organisations are increasingly replacing classic integration platforms that are now considered too expensive and complex for modern integration delivery practices,” said Natis.

Increase in Enterprise Adoption and Usage of Enterprise LCAPs

LCAP has moved to mainstream maturity globally, reaching more than 50% of the global target audience. Gartner analysts estimate that the LCAP revenue market will total $7.4 billion in 2022, an increase of 28.4% year over year.

As organisations need to be more agile and adaptive many complement centralized application investments with owning their own application development and analytics skills and tools. The increasing business appetite for technology self-service results in the rapid growth and increasing maturity of low-code platform technologies.

LCAPs have also emerged as a key component of successful hyper automation because low-code development tools are among the tools used to support automation initiatives such as digitization of records. “In the context of the increasing demand for fast business change, LCAPs provide organisations an opportunity for accelerated digital innovation,” said Natis.

Gartner forecasts that by 2024, hyper automation functionality will be the dominant competitive differentiator among low-code development tools.