App Connect overview

App Connect is a multi-tenant managed service that unlocks the value of your data by connecting business applications, integrating data, and building APIs. The IBM product team manages, maintains, and operates the service.

App Connect helps you to connect your applications and data by providing user-centred, AI-infused tools, and prebuilt smart connectors.

App Connect includes the following key features.
User-centred tools for business-wide collaboration
  • Newer integrators can collaborate seamlessly with integration experts and build organization-wide integrations.
  • App Connect Designer provides a browser-based, graphical, no-code interface where business users with no technical expertise can create and test integrations quickly.
    Screenshot of the App Connect Designer authoring experience. An event-driven flow begins with a Scheduler node, which triggers the flow on a configured schedule. Whenever the flow is triggered, new events are retrieved from an Eventbrite account. Then a For each node creates a folder in Box for each retrieved event. The Box folder name is mapped to the name of the Eventbrite event.

    This example of an event-driven flow begins with a Scheduler node, which triggers the flow on a configured schedule. Whenever the flow is triggered, App Connect retrieves new events from an Eventbrite account. A For each node is added to the flow to process each retrieved event. For each of those events, App Connect creates a folder in Box, where the folder name is taken from the name of the Eventbrite event.

  • Built-in AI-powered tools help with flow generation, automatic mapping, and data transformation.
    • The AI-based integration agent is powered by IBM watsonx and can create flows for the scenarios that you describe.
    • The mapping assist feature generates smart suggestions that are best matches for target fields in your integrations.
    • The transformation generator helps to construct complex transformations that map source data to target data.
  • The App Connect Enterprise Toolkit is a powerful and flexible downloadable tool for expert integrators. The Toolkit supports a wide range of data formats and proprietary protocols, and provides graphical tools and custom coding.
An all-in-one platform
  • You can use App Connect to integrate your data, create APIs, and act on events in your applications.
  • Create and test event-driven and API flows in App Connect Designer.
  • Deploy flows that you create in App Connect Designer or the IBM® App Connect Enterprise Toolkit.
Prebuilt smart connectors for secure connection
  • App Connect provides prebuilt smart connectors to connect securely to your applications and data, both on premises and in the cloud. Application, data, and protocol connectors are provided.
    Screenshot of the App Connect Catalog of smart connectors, including connectors for Amazon S3, AWS Lambda, Calendly, CMIS, and Confluence.
  • Use secure agents to connect to private sources.
  • Use IBM Automation Explorer to find more IBM-developed connectors and community-developed connectors to use in your flows. You can also develop your own connectors by using the Connector Development Kit.
    The IBM Automation Explorer, showing connectors for App Connect.
  • Take advantage of templates that combine smart connectors to achieve common integration tasks.
    The App Connect template gallery, showing templates that include the Amazon S3 connector.
A fully managed secure, reliable, and scalable platform
  • The IBM product team manages and maintains App Connect.
  • The service is updated regularly with security and bug fixes.

You can provision a 30-day trial or a paid subscription of IBM webMethods Hybrid Integration and add the App Connect capability. In a trial subscription, you can create a maximum of two local integration runtimes in App Connect.