What is software integration?

Software integration connects separate applications so they can exchange data and trigger actions without manual copying, but the term also refers to customer-facing product integrations and to combining code modules during software development, making context essential. Commercial integration has no universal standards definition, and related terms such as application, system, data, API, and enterprise application integration overlap in scope and implementation. Integrations typically begin with user authorization, commonly through OAuth 2.0, then support data reads, writes, and event notifications through approaches including direct connections, hubs, API-led architectures, event-driven systems, file transfers, ETL/ELT, reverse ETL, iPaaS, embedded iPaaS, and unified APIs. Although many underlying technologies have specifications, webhooks lack a universal standard and newer agent-access protocols such as MCP are still evolving. Maintaining integrations is often more difficult than building them because API providers differ in authentication behavior, rate limits, pagination, error formats, version policies, webhook support, and deprecation practices. Decisions to build integrations internally or use a vendor depend on scale, customer-facing support requirements, write capabilities, data handling, and responsibility for ongoing API changes, while AI-agent access introduces additional concerns around authorization, tenant isolation, and protecting personal data.

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