Blog Post Why Universal Integration Platform V2.0 is a Big Deal

It is no secret; organizations are currently figuring out how to orchestrate all the automated IT processes across an ever-growing list of platforms, applications, and infrastructure types. What they have discovered is that orchestration equals integration. 

In other words, you cannot orchestrate anything if you cannot integrate your automation platform with the system(s) you want to control. Stonebranch has been solving the integration problem for years. But, version 7.0 of our Universal Automation Center (UAC) platform just took a giant step forward in the world of rapid integration creation. 

Released in April, UAC V7.0 includes the latest iteration of our Universal Integration Platform (UIP) V2.0. UIP V2.0 didn’t appear overnight. Stonebranch has long provided customers and partners with a way to connect to various on-prem, cloud, and containerized systems from the UAC. With UIP V2.0, we’ve built upon these foundations to create a next-generation integrations platform that delivers some incredible new capabilities.

What is the Universal Integration Platform? 

For those unfamiliar with the Universal Integration Platform, the UIP is a architectural framework included within the UAC. The UIP is designed to rapidly create and deploy integrations used to connect the UAC with any third-party applications and platforms (across hybrid IT environments). 

Customers use integrations to control third-party applications from the UAC to automate jobs/workloads, orchestrate DevOps processes, manage big data pipelines, and much more.  

Universal Extensions are built to be low-code / no-code enabled. This approach allows end-users, who do not possess coding experience, to easily drag and drop any integrated system in their environment into a workflow or schedule within the UAC.

View this 15 Minute Video to Learn About All the New Features of UIP V2.0
 

New Features in UIP V2.0

• Easier deployment of integrations with a “3-click process” to download and install within the UAC’s Universal Controller
• Real-time response to Universal Controller commands enables end-users to perform actions “against” the target application or platform from within the UAC
• Powerful two-way communication between UAC and 3rd party solutions
• Improved collection of metadata from the target application
• Documentation & templates to help our customers and partners build their own integrations using UIP V2.0
• UIP V2.0 provides complete packaging of all the elements you’ll need for the integrations you download
• We’re adding new integrations all the time, and the release schedule is accelerating.

Final Words

As mentioned in the opening paragraph, orchestration is equal to integration. More important, however, is the ability to create integrations easily and rapidly. Just think back to the volume of solutions your organization has added or replaced over the past five years. Then ask yourself what’s going to happen in the next five years? Realistically, the only thing we know for sure is that there will be new tools added to the mix, and it will be vitally important that IT teams can integrate with them. With UIP V2.0, you can rest assured that you will have these integrations ready when you need them.  

Getting Started

Once you have upgraded to UAC V7.0, visit the UIP V2.0 documentation to build your first Universal Extension using the UIP V2.0. Within the documentation, you’ll find templates and instructions to learn how to get started. 

Or, check out the Stonebranch Integration Hub, to begin downloading integrations from our opensource library.