Enterprise Integration with IBM Cloud Pak for Integration on Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS

Integration between applications is a critical aspect of an enterprise’s IT infrastructure. When applications and data are kept in separate silos, it can complicate information exchange and affect operational efficiency and business agility. Addressing these integration challenges is important for an organization’s digital transformation journey. IBM Cloud Pak for Integration (CP4I) and Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA) can help customers address these challenges.

CP4I provides a comprehensive set of integration tools, including API management, data integration, and messaging. These integration tools help to connect, automate, and manage data across the enterprise. ROSA is a managed OpenShift service that simplifies the deployment and management of containerized applications, enabling scalable and consistent integration on AWS.

These enable businesses to innovate faster, increase productivity, and streamline the deployment of new systems. By leveraging CP4I and ROSA, organizations can make applications and data more accessible, support a more flexible operational environment, and enhance overall efficiency.

What is IBM Cloud Pak for Integration?

IBM Cloud Pak for Integration is a comprehensive platform that helps organizations integrate various systems and manage their data flow efficiently. It provides a suite of services, including IBM App Connect for application integration, IBM API Connect for managing and securing APIs, IBM DataStage for data integration and transformation, and IBM MQ for reliable messaging.

CP4I helps you connect various systems by using IBM App Connect to orchestrate workflows and integrate applications seamlessly. With IBM API Connect, you can design, secure, and manage APIs, facilitating effective system communication. IBM DataStage supports real-time data integration and synchronization, ensuring that information is accurate and up-to-date across systems. IBM MQ provides secure and reliable messaging between applications and systems of record. This enables your business to quickly access and share information, respond to events efficiently, and maintain secure, scalable messaging and connectivity.

In this blog, we will talk about how deploying IBM CP4I on AWS ROSA offers an effective approach to building and managing efficient integrations.

What is ROSA?

ROSA is a fully managed implementation of OpenShift, jointly supported and operated by AWS and Red Hat, that simplifies application deployment and accelerates innovation by offloading cluster lifecycle management.

Available from the AWS console, ROSA simplifies management and broadens the range of tools with cloud-native applications and AWS service integrations. By using ROSA, customers can dedicate their resources to driving business value instead of managing the underlying platform.

Why ROSA for IBM Cloud Pak for Integration in AWS?

IBM Cloud Pak for Integration requires a running Red Hat OpenShift cluster for installation and configuration. ROSA provides a managed OpenShift cluster, which is fully supported for deploying IBM CP4I.

Deploying IBM CP4I on ROSA ensures streamlined integration and efficient container management. It combines IBM’s integration tools with OpenShift’s container orchestration, making application deployment and scaling straightforward.

Running this setup on AWS leverages its scalable infrastructure and security services. This combination provides a reliable environment for managing and connecting enterprise systems with minimal overhead. This allows customers to focus on their business requirements while AWS and Red Hat handle the undifferentiated heavy-lifting of managing the underlying platform.

IBM Cloud Pak for Integration when deployed on ROSA can also integrate with AWS services to meet customers’ varying business needs. The AWS services include Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), Amazon DynamoDB, AWS Lambda, Amazon Redshift, Amazon Kinesis Data Streams and others. This enables seamless data exchange, application connectivity, secure messaging, and API management, making it easy to integrate applications and data across different environments.

Challenges with traditional middleware and integration

Traditionally, integration products were deployed as middleware infrastructure. They were often complex to build and difficult to deploy, requiring significant effort to maintain. Once in place, the priority was to keep the integrations stable and unchanged. Business functions using the integration were tightly coupled to it, making any modifications challenging and risky.

New business opportunities often led to the need for new or modified applications and access to different data from various systems. Changing existing, rigid integrations was complex and required specific skills, extensive testing, and time. This process could disrupt other parts of the business, hindering innovation and delaying necessary upgrades or security fixes.

How does IBM Cloud Pak for Integration on ROSA solve these challenges?

Businesses require integration solutions that are secure, scalable, and reliable, yet also agile, automated, and easy to manage. IBM Cloud Pak for Integration (CP4I) aims to meet these needs by offering a unified integration solution. It consolidates various integration capabilities into a single platform that can be deployed quickly and consistently, facilitating faster innovation with improved flexibility and efficiency.

As shown in Figure 1, IBM CP4I is designed as a cloud-native solution. It operates in containers on Red Hat OpenShift, using Operators for a standardized deployment approach. This setup allows workloads to deploy, run, scale, update, and restart independently, reducing complexity and providing greater flexibility.

Diagram showing how Cloud Pak for Integration is deployed on top of Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS.

Figure 1. IBM Cloud Pak for Integration on Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS.

Licensing Flexibility

Licensing for CP4I offers significant flexibility. You can purchase a single license and deploy any capability with any capacity, across various deployment forms. This means you can choose to deploy in containers on OpenShift or use individual integration products on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, all under one licensing agreement. This simplifies billing with a single price for all integration needs.

With consistent deployment options, whether in containers or on Amazon EC2 instances, it’s easier to build, deploy, operate, and update integrations. As demands grow or changes are needed, DevOps practices can automate these processes. You can scale container workloads and deploy additional instances as required, all configured to meet specific workload needs.

Deployment automation with IBM Cloud Pak for Integration on ROSA

Integrations are designed to address specific needs, often requiring multiple components to be defined and deployed to support a specific solution. As shown in Figure 2, IBM CP4I automates integration deployments through the use of Integration Assemblies.

An Integration Assembly provides a centralized way to define, manage, and deploy all components of an integration solution. Customers can start by providing the name of the desired integration. They will then be guided through the setup of IBM MQ, IBM Event Streams, IBM App Connect and IBM API Connect components using opinionated defaults. Once defined, the integration can be deployed and managed as a single unified entity. This setup can be done via a graphical interface, a web form, or directly in YAML.

Screenshot showing how to automate deployments using Deployment Assembly.

Figure 2. Automating deployments using Deployment Assembly.

Once integrations are deployed, updates or migrations to future releases are simplified using a dedicated migration planning tool. This tool guides each deployment through a customized migration process. With container deployments providing decoupled, independent workloads, updates and migrations become seamless and disruption-free.

Summary

Integration is crucial for business transformation. To meet business needs, to be faster, more agile, and less complex, IBM Cloud Pak for Integration deployed on Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS offers a scalable, secure and resilient deployment environment.

It provides a comprehensive integration solution that connects and exchanges data across all your applications and environments. Automation, AI, and cloud technologies work together to drive your business transformation, ensuring your data is both accessible and secure, while enabling your business to respond to events efficiently without becoming overwhelmed.

IBM & Red Hat on AWS