You've probably heard the pitch before. Install an integration hub in your data center. Keep everything behind your firewall. Maintain complete control over your ITSM integrations and service provider connections.

It sounds compelling, especially when you're juggling multiple service providers, complex e-bonding requirements, and strict governance mandates. But here's what that pitch doesn't tell you: on-premise integration platforms often create more problems than they solve for modern enterprises.

What are on-premise integrations?

On-premise integration platforms are software systems you install and operate within your own data centers or private cloud environments. Unlike cloud-based integration services that run in a vendor's infrastructure, these platforms run on servers you control, behind your network perimeter.

These systems typically function as integration hubs, or centralized brokers that sit between your various IT service management tools and external service providers. Key characteristics include:

• Runtime engines and adapters. These execute your integration logic and provide connectors for different protocols, applications, and data formats. They handle everything from REST APIs to legacy file transfers and message queues.
• Transformation capabilities. Built-in mapping engines translate data between different systems, normalizing field structures and converting formats so your ITSM tools can communicate despite speaking different languages.
• Orchestration and routing. The hub routes tickets, incidents, changes, and other artifacts between internal tools and external service providers based on business rules you define.
• Monitoring and operations. Dashboards and logging capabilities help you track integration health, debug failures, and maintain visibility into data flows across your ecosystem.

Example of on-premise integrations: Lomnido

Lomnido represents a typical on-premise integration approach, offering two main products specifically designed for service integration scenarios.

Their SIAM-Broker product focuses on multi-sourcing and Service Integration and Management use cases. It's designed to connect different ITSM systems, service desks, CMDBs, and asset management tools across company boundaries. The platform aims to enable organizations managing multiple service providers to exchange incident, change, and ticket information automatically between disparate tools.

Their SPIDER product is positioned as a web-based integration solution for processing larger data volumes. It uses a drag-and-drop configuration interface and handles synchronization, aggregation, distribution, and replication of data across internal systems and external partners.

Both solutions are deployed on-premise or in your private cloud environment. Lomnido emphasizes that you can keep using your existing ITSM tools without modification while the integration hub sits between them, mediating data exchange. 

How and why on-premise integrations emerged?

On-premise platforms emerged from an era when most enterprise software lived in company data centers. They made sense when you were connecting two on-premise ERP systems or syncing incidents between internally-hosted ITSM instances. The integration hub simply connected systems that already lived behind your firewall.

But your technology landscape has changed dramatically. Your ITSM tools are likely cloud-based now. Your service providers use their own SaaS platforms. Your workforce accesses systems from anywhere. Yet on-premise integration platforms still operate as if everything lives in your building.

That's where the problems begin.

The hidden costs nobody talks about

When you evaluate on-premise integration solutions, the license fee is just the beginning. The real cost reveals itself slowly, like a subscription you forgot to cancel.

You need platform engineers to keep the runtime operational. Integration developers to build and maintain your flows. A service integration team to onboard each new provider. Don't forget the infrastructure costs. High availability configurations, disaster recovery environments, monitoring tools, and the compute capacity to handle your peak loads.

Your team becomes your bottleneck

Every new service provider means another integration project. Your platform team queues up the work. Developers build custom adapters. You schedule testing windows. Finally, weeks later, you're ready to flip the switch.

Meanwhile, your business is moving faster than your integration capacity. New SaaS tools emerge. Providers change their APIs. Mergers and acquisitions bring new systems into your ecosystem. Your on-premise platform can't keep pace because you're the limiting factor, not the technology, but the operational overhead required to run it.

The sovereignty myth

Data sovereignty is the most common justification for on-premise integration platforms. Your data never leaves your network perimeter, so you satisfy regulatory requirements and customer mandates. Problem solved, right?

Not quite. Modern integration patterns have evolved beyond the simple "data stays inside" model. What matters isn't where your integration runtime sits—it's how you architect your data flows, implement encryption, maintain audit trails, and enforce access controls.

You can achieve genuine data sovereignty with cloud-based integration platforms through proper implementation. The data you're integrating already lives in multiple systems—often including cloud applications. An integration platform that processes messages in transit, with proper encryption and without persistent storage, can meet the same compliance requirements without the operational burden.

When complexity compounds

SIAM and multi-sourcing scenarios demand more than simple field mapping. You need to handle comments, attachments, state transitions, reopening logic, and reconciliation rules across disparate ITSM tools. Each service provider operates differently, uses different workflows, and interprets incident lifecycles in their own way.

On-premise platforms promise to handle this complexity. What they actually do is transfer that complexity to you. Now you're maintaining partner-specific business rules, debugging integration failures at 2 AM, and coordinating upgrade windows across multiple providers who don't care about your maintenance schedule.

The complexity doesn't disappear. It just becomes your responsibility instead of someone else's expertise.

Alternative to On-premise Integrations

This is where ONEiO takes a fundamentally different approach. We don't sell you software to operate. We deliver integration outcomes through a managed service built on Integration Ops principles.

Integration Ops means treating integrations as a continuous operational capability, not a series of one-off IT projects. It means having experts who understand ITSM workflows, SIAM patterns, and service provider ecosystems working on your behalf—not just giving you tools and documentation.

When you need to onboard a new service provider, you're not creating a project plan and assigning engineers. You're working with integration specialists who've built hundreds of similar connections and know exactly how to handle the edge cases you haven't discovered yet.

Want more information on Integration Ops? Download our most popular downloadable book.

The platform you don't have to run

ONEiO's cloud-native platform handles all the operational complexity that bogs down on-premise solutions. We manage the infrastructure, maintain high availability, apply security patches, and scale capacity as your needs grow. You get SLAs backed by our expertise, not promises backed by your understaffed platform team.

More importantly, we continuously improve the platform with new connectors, enhanced capabilities, and integration patterns learned from our entire customer base. When one customer's unique ITSM challenge gets solved, that knowledge becomes available to everyone else. Your on-premise platform gets smarter only when you invest your time into making it smarter.

Speed matters more than you think

Your competitors are integrating new tools in days, not months. They're adapting to provider changes quickly. They're experimenting with new service management approaches without massive integration project overhead.

Meanwhile, you're waiting for your platform team to have capacity. You're postponing initiatives because integration work isn't scoped yet. You're operating at the speed of your technical constraints, not the speed of your business strategy.

This isn't just about efficiency. It's about competitiveness. The integration approach you choose determines how fast you can execute on everything else.

What governance actually requires

Proper integration governance doesn't come from having servers in your building. It comes from having clear data contracts, documented flows, comprehensive audit trails, and consistent monitoring across all your integrations.

ONEiO delivers this through Integration Ops. You get visibility into every integration, standardized documentation for compliance purposes, and operational metrics that prove your integrations meet SLA requirements. The governance artifacts you need for audits are generated automatically, not compiled manually from various monitoring dashboards you maintain yourself.

The question you should be asking

The choice isn't really between on-premise and cloud. It's between building an integration capability yourself or leveraging specialized integration expertise as a managed service.

Ask yourself: 

• Is running integration infrastructure your core competency? 
• Do you want your best engineers maintaining integration platforms, or building the systems that differentiate your business? 
• Can you attract and retain the specialized talent required to operate this infrastructure excellently?

For most enterprises, the honest answers point away from on-premise solutions.

Make the shift to Integration Ops

Moving from an on-premise mindset to Integration Ops requires a perspective change. You're not buying software. You're buying outcomes. You're not building a platform. You're enabling your business to integrate faster and more reliably than ever before.

Your service providers don't care what integration technology you use. Your auditors care about compliance evidence, not deployment models. Your business leaders care about speed and reliability, not infrastructure ownership.

ONEiO's Integration Ops approach delivers what actually matters: fast, reliable, governed integrations that scale with your business without scaling your operational burden.

Where to start

If you're currently running or evaluating on-premise integration platforms, calculate your true total cost of ownership. Include not just licensing and infrastructure, but the opportunity cost of the team capacity you're dedicating to integration operations.

Then imagine redirecting that capacity toward business-differentiating work. Imagine onboarding new providers in days instead of months. Imagine compliance reporting that happens automatically instead of through manual evidence compilation.

That's what moving from on-premise infrastructure to Integration Ops enables. Not just different technology—a different way of operating that makes your enterprise more agile, your integrations more reliable, and your team more focused on what actually matters.

Ready to explore what Integration Ops could mean for your organization? Let's talk about your specific integration challenges and map out how a managed approach could transform your service integration capability.

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