Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is Adeptia?

Adeptia is a technology software company. Adeptia’s software product is called Adeptia Connect, and it is an application to modernize the onboarding of business data within the ecosystem of customers and partners, using a self-service approach for business people. Learn more about Adeptia, the company.

What benefits does Adeptia technology deliver?

Adeptia helps companies more easily, simply, and effectively manage the exchange of business data with other companies.

• Delivers Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere onboarding
• Empowers companies to delight customers with a better onboarding experience and service delivery
• Makes them easier to do business with, resulting in an increase of market share and improved customer retention
• Opens new markets due to more agility and flexibility to move more quickly
• Reduces information technology and operational costs
• Speeds up time to value and fast forwards revenues
• Empowers business people to manage partner relationships, with no need to wait for IT data integration experts
• Creates a collaborative community experience

Why did we develop Adeptia?

Adeptia created its technology to completely transform the traditional approach of how companies exchange data and information with other businesses. Typically, these older ways of “business-to-business integration” require complex software tools to be evaluated by IT departments, purchased, and then deployed and managed. Some of these developer-centric tools are B2B gateways, B2B integration tools, Message Brokers, EDI Translators, Managed File Transfer (MFT) tools, or tools that use external services such as Value-Added Networks (VANs).

The main problems with the traditional approach include the large effort needed to build and manage hundreds of connections with partners, the high cost of expensive IT resources, delays in adding new customers, the lack of flexibility, the greater burden on customers and partners to be able to connect, and dependence on the involvement of IT staff. There has been little innovation in the last 20 years in this area, and the process remains an inefficient and unproductive exercise. Many companies are simply fed up and outsource data integration to external vendors, such as managed services providers or VANS, which is just a way to transfer work from internal to external resources. The cost of doing this inefficiently is still paid by the companies in the form of vendor fees.

Adeptia changes all this with a fresh, new approach.

How does Adeptia work?

Adeptia enables your business users to create and use connections for onboarding customers and partners with a no-code approach. While IT operates in a governance role by creating pre-built templates for business connectivity, non-technical business users use those templates in an operational role.

Adeptia is an enterprise-level integration platform that lets you perform any-to-any integration between your customers and partners. The Citizen Integrator approach of Adeptia empowers your business users to shorten onboarding time from weeks or months to just days, thereby accelerating service delivery and revenue realization while empowering IT to become more productive.

What type of companies purchase Adeptia technology?

Adeptia has hundreds of customers, and its technology is used in mission-critical environments by these clients and their ecosystems, which include thousands of customers and partners.

• Adeptia clients are in various industries, with concentration in Financial Services, Insurance, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Distribution, and data-driven Service Providers.
• Adeptia clients range in size from companies with annual revenues of USD10M to well over USD170B.
• Adeptia counts a number of Fortune 500 companies as its customers, including VISA, Fidelity Investments, FIS, Voya, Lincoln Financial Group, CUNA Mutual, US Bank, Amerisource Bergen, Avery Dennison, Arthur J. Gallagher, NASDAQ, Paychex, Insperity, Hussmann, Fujitsu, Topco, Unilever, State Street Bank, Lavazza, and others.

How is Adeptia recognized in its market?

Adeptia delivers a leading enterprise-class product, and it has received multiple industry credentials. Adeptia has been included by Gartner in its Data Integration Magic Quadrant nine years in a row. Adeptia is the only business-to-business data integration software company that has been recognized on multiple Gartner Magic Quadrants and Forrester Waves:

• Gartner – Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools, Aug. 2021
• Forrester – Wave for Strategic iPaaS and Hybrid Integration Platforms, Jan. 2021
• Gartner – Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools, Aug. 2020
• Forrester – Wave for Strategic iPaaS and Hybrid Integration Platforms, Jan. 2019
• Gartner – Critical Capabilities for Data Integration Tools, Oct. 2018
• Forrester – Wave for iPaaS For Dynamic Integration, Q3 2016
• Gartner – Magic Quadrant for Application Integration Suites
• Forrester – Wave for Hybrid Integration
• Gartner – Market Guide for B2B Gateway Software

How does Adeptia help business users?

Adeptia gives power to your business users and lets them onboard customers and partners without the need for complex coding. Business users can setup and self-manage partner data exchange, reducing partner onboarding time by up to 80 percent and automating up to 90 percent of onboarding for accelerating service delivery.

With Adeptia, business users can use pre-built connection templates that enable repeatable processes and reusable efficiencies. In their operational role, business users are able to drive onboarding without relying on complex coding or IT for day-to-day operations.

How does Adeptia help IT users?

A key innovation in Adeptia is to separate the enterprise data connectivity process into two parts:

• The external-facing, front-end for business users
• The internal integration with back-end applications and databases that abstracts the complexity

If Adeptia is the front-end for business users, then the back-end integration is still managed and implemented by IT staff. For this they can continue using their existing tool set or use the Adeptia Suite with its simpler, SOA-based approach for application integration. Here all the complexity of data validation, mapping rules, message routing, error-handling, etc., is implemented and managed by engineers. By isolating the complex part of connectivity in this back-end integration, IT staff are able to provide business users with a simpler “walled-garden” on the front-end.

This helps IT teams focus on higher-value tasks and become more productive. It helps business users have more self-reliance to do the day-to-day work, and thus reduces pressure on IT staff because the business workers are no longer “waiting on IT.”

How can Adeptia help me get started quickly?

Adeptia’s professional services team works closely with clients to help them go live in production as soon as possible. The steps involved are:

• Scope the exact requirements
• Design the solution
• Provide training
• Install the application
• Prepare a timeline with phased approach
• Help with or drive the development tasks

Can I try Adeptia before I buy it?

Yes. Adeptia’s goal is to be transparent and open to help you make your purchase decision with confidence. To assist with evaluation, Adeptia can provide access to a cloud instance of its product or provide a trial license for installation in your environment. Please contact your account executive for access.

How can I talk to existing Adeptia customer references?

Your Adeptia account executive can provide you with customer references upon request.

What kind of ROI can Adeptia clients expect?

Clients who purchase Adeptia application tell us that it is a great value and that they see both soft and hard quantifiable benefits that improve their business. Many clients report improvement in their Net Promoter Scores (NPS) when they conduct customer surveys. Adeptia is a key application in their digital business transformation strategy because it involves optimizing their workforce and process efficiencies. It makes them more flexible to go after new business opportunities. ROI varies by customer and their use cases, but it is achieved by:

• Fast forwarding additional revenue by reducing customer onboarding time from several weeks down to one week — 0r less
• Reducing time spent on handling exceptions and significantly reducing data errors
• Increasing productivity of IT staff significantly
• Reducing wait time for business users
• Reducing expenses due to SLA and service delivery mishaps
• Offloading tasks to external partner users

What are the Adeptia product editions?

Adeptia offers its business application in four product editions – Standard, Professional, Premier, and Enterprise. These editions are tailored to meet specific use cases and business needs of customers, and they allow the customer to purchase the product that precisely addresses their needs. Please see our detailed features list for full details on how these editions compare.

Standard

1. Get started with simpler and easier customer data integration and onboarding
2. Enables clients to setup and manage data exchanges with customers and partners as well as internal integrations with databases and backend applications
3. Supports all channels of data exchange, such as via Files, Web Forms, APIs, Applications, Databases, remote agent software, etc.
4. Managed by Adeptia in the cloud. Nothing to install, nothing to manage.
5. Almost all AC functionality is included, except publishing of APIs and Web Services. They can be accessed and consumed as client
6. Good fit for small and mid-sized clients and for divisions of larger companies
7. Production environment size licensed for maximum of 15 CPU cores
8. One runtime container of 2 CPU cores. This means up to 2 CPU cores are available for processing of data, which allows multiple concurrent files and APIs to run at a time
9. Limitations of Standard edition compared to other editions:

• • Publishing of APIs not enabled (can consume APIs)
  • Up to 20 external partners included, additional can be purchased
  • No non-prod instance. Development and testing can be done in same production environment using separate project folders
  • Logs saved for up to two weeks
  • Up to 10 data flows for internal integrations
  • Cannot private-label User Interface with your company logo.  This edition also does not support object versioning

Professional

1. This edition supports all the integration use-cases, such as data integration scenarios like Extract-Transform-Load (ETL), Application Integration, Enabling and publishing APIs, Business-to-Business (B2B), and Cloud Integration scenarios where data needs to be integrated in batch or real-time mode.
2. All Adeptia functionality is included; limits of Standard edition are removed.
3. Managed by Adeptia in the cloud. Self-managed or On-Premises option available
4. Virtual network (VPN) to extend clients’ internal network to Adeptia app in cloud
5. Good fit for small and mid-sized clients and for divisions of larger companies
6. Production environment size licensed for maximum of 15 CPU cores
7. One runtime container of 2 CPU cores
8. Why choose this over Standard edition?

• • Need to publish APIs, need versioning, need logs for longer time-period
  • Need to have Adeptia configured virtually (VNet) as part of your internal network so internal applications and databases and file systems can be accessed
  • Need a non-production environment for development and testing
  • Need more than 10 internal data integration flows
  • Increases included partners to 50

Premier

1. Extends integrations to automate data-centric business processes, such as customer data onboarding, partner provisioning, and data integration, etc.
2. Creates business solutions with forms and reports to present a familiar terminology and look-and-feel for business users
3. Enables IT teams to provide rich collaboration, management, and self-service capabilities for business users while retaining governance and compliance of security and access rules
4. Process (parse, validate, transform, generate, load) very large, flat or hierarchical, text or XML files ranging from 1GB to 100GB+
5. Good fit for companies and organizations of all sizes
6. Production environment size licensed for maximum of 17 CPU cores
7. Two runtime containers of 2 CPU cores each
8. These features help enabling and management of business users
9. Why choose this over Professional edition?

• • Create solutions for business teams, customize Adeptia for business process and theme
  • Manage users centrally via LDAP/SAML SSO
  • Large file processing
  • More processing capacity and redundancy with 2nd runtime container
  • Increase included partners to 75

Enterprise

1. Comprehensive business application for Ecosystem and Internal integration scenarios to centrally manage all data flows
2. Self-service for users to manage data connections with business networks of 1000s of customers and partners
3. Extends self-service to external partners to enable true collaboration on managing data exchanges.
4. Clients purchase this edition for implementing corporate Digital Transformation strategy to enable self-service and next-level customer experience
5. Production environment size licensed for maximum of 40 CPU cores
6. Eight runtime containers of 2 CPU cores each
7. Client wants higher reliability and SLA compliance
8. Why choose this over Premier?

• • Enables access for external partner users
  • Includes partner-to-partner exchange feature, not just partner-to-hub
  • Tenant boundary feature for isolating performance impact and support SLA compliance
  • High-availability, redundant setup across multi-zones for business continuity
  • Increases included partners to 150

What is the Adeptia pricing model?

Adeptia application is purchased via a subscription pricing model. There are three dimensions for pricing.

• Edition: Customers first select and purchase one of four Adeptia product editions – Standard, Professional, Premier, or Enterprise.
• Features: Customers then select add-ons for extra features, such as application connectors or other optional functionalities.
• Capacity: Customers may add-on larger processing capacity or additional items, such as partners, users, non-production environments, etc.

Technical support and upgrades are included with the subscription.

Is the billing monthly or annual?

The Adeptia subscription is billed on an annual basis.

How do I get a price quote estimate?

Your Adeptia account executive will be happy to provide you with a price quote estimate. We typically need information about your use cases, data volumes, data transactions, partner network, expected users, and other applications to size the setup and estimate license prices. You can also request a quote here.

How frequently does Adeptia change or increase prices?

Adeptia reviews its prices annually and reserves the right to change prices at any time. Annual renewals are subject to then-current prices.

How do I select the Adeptia product edition that is right for me?

During your technology selection process, your Adeptia account executive will discuss your business needs and requirements, then share that information with our engineers and solution architects. Based on the information you provide, Adeptia will be able to recommend the right product edition for you. This recommendation may change as we learn more from you and have further discussions. From our experience, it is likely that a prospect starts with one edition in mind and then actually purchases another as the scope of their solution changes when they learn of a better approach during the sales process.

What is the process to upgrade from one edition to next?

Adeptia is a single application, and the product editions and other options are simply configured in the application. This makes upgrading the application very easy. Once you inform your Adeptia account executive about your decision to upgrade, a short contract addendum will be sent for your sign-off, and your Adeptia application will be upgraded.

What is a partner?

“Partner” is defined as a unique external entity that is being managed in Adeptia’s partner management. This allows the setup of integration transactions, tracking, and monitoring of data flows with each partner.

• Each named entity of an external company counts as a “partner.”
• Adeptia does not count number of transactions or data volumes with partners.
• In case of Enterprise edition with “Partner Access” option, each partner gets a user account for web access to the Adeptia application.
• In case of connection with a Value-Added Network (VAN) or Data Aggregator who is receiving/sending data from many third-party companies, that would be treated as multiple partners based on the number of endpoints from which the data is being exchanged. Usually in these cases, there is a need to separately track, log and monitor the data flows with the third-party companies (coming via the VAN or Data Aggregator), and so each third-party company will be treated as a unique partner.

What is a user? Are the users named or concurrent?

A user in Adeptia application is a person who accesses the application. Each individual user is a named account created in Adeptia. The following type of user roles are available.

• Admin user: Manages the application and can create other users
• Developer user: Has access to the full functionality of Adeptia with focus on the technical features
• Viewer user: A business user who only has access to the dashboard and logs to allow monitoring and tracking of data flows. Does not have ability to manage or configure.
• Business user: An operational user who manages partners and can configure and collaborate with developer and partner users. This type of user role is available in Enterprise edition.
• Partner user:  An external user who belongs to other companies with whom the data exchanges are being managed in Adeptia. This type of user role is available in Enterprise edition.

Where is Adeptia deployed?

Adeptia application is managed by Adeptia in the cloud. Adeptia uses Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure. In situations in which a client prefers to deploy Adeptia in their own data center or their own cloud, Adeptia offers the self-managed environment option and provides the client with installer and guidance for such deployment.

What is the managed services description of Adeptia Connect Cloud?

Adeptia Connect platform is managed by Adeptia in the cloud, and the client users are given web-browser access to use the application. As part of its responsibilities, Adeptia provides access to its application, manages, and maintains it, upgrades it when needed and, in general, ensures that the application runs smoothly and efficiently for the client. This includes:

• Deployment and maintenance of Adeptia Connect application
• Monitoring of Adeptia and tracking of system usage metrics
• Upgrading the Adeptia application when new releases are available
• Assistance with configuration of VPN/VNet with client network
• 24×7 monitoring of the cloud infrastructure, security and Adeptia application
• Adding cloud virtual machine and DB resources when needed
• Patching and updates of OS and DB and any other software
• Performing backups and disaster recovery
• Designing cloud architecture for Adeptia application to be deployed in scalable and redundant manner
• Regulatory Compliance (HIPAA/HITECH, HITRUST, PCI, GDPR, SOX, ISO 27001, and others)
• Threat detection and remediation
• Data encryption and data integrity and Server-side encryption
• Ensuring restricted and authorized access to cloud infrastructure and Adeptia application
• Networking traffic protection against intrusion and DDoS attacks
• Troubleshoot and resolve any cloud infrastructure and Adeptia application issues and ensure maximum uptime

What does the Adeptia Connect Cloud managed services not cover?

As part of the Adeptia Connect Cloud service, Adeptia provides access to its application to the client. Its usage and data integration solution implementation is up to the client. The following functions, in terms of usage of the application, are client responsibilities:

• Managing client users
• Configuring the data integrations, data flows and transactions
• Setting up partners
• Configuring app connectors, file layouts and data mappings
• Using or publishing APIs
• Setting up events and triggers
• Monitoring the running of data flows and handling errors etc.

These services do not cover the actual implementation as those are separately billed services. Adeptia recommends the engagement of its training and implementation services as that leads to faster success.

What SLAs does Adeptia commit to?

Adeptia will use commercially reasonable efforts to make Adeptia Connect Cloud to be available 99.9 percent of the time, excluding:

1. Planned downtime for maintenance; and
2. Unscheduled downtime caused by:

• • Circumstances beyond Adeptia’s or its contractors’ reasonable control (including, but not limited to, acts of God, acts of government, flood, fire, earthquake, civil unrest, acts of terror, strike or other labor problem, issues related to 3rd party applications, customer data, or denial of service attacks);
  • Circumstances entitling Adeptia to suspend access to the Adeptia Connect application due to non-payment by client; and
  • Client’s failure to use the Adeptia Connect application in accordance with its obligations or the documentation;
  • Service failure at the Microsoft Azure cloud environment affecting their customers; or
  • Degradation of service due to high packet loss or similar conditions which may be indicative of the Internet as a whole or those resulting as a consequence of malicious activity not reasonably foreseeable by Adeptia.

How do we access internal data in applications and databases with Adeptia Connect Cloud?

To ensure that the Adeptia Connect application in the cloud has access to clients’ internal applications and databases, Adeptia provides the option to configure Virtual Network (VNet). It is basically an extension of the clients’ internal data network and allows use of private IP addresses, define subnets, access control policies, and more. Using VPN technology, VNet is a highly-secure and proven solution provided by Microsoft Azure that allows the Adeptia Connect application in the cloud to effectively be a part of the clients’ data center.

What is a runtime container, and how much can one 2 CPU core container process?

Adeptia Connect application is engineered in a cloud-native, containerized architecture that leverages multiple microservices that run in Docker containers managed by a Kubernetes cluster. Adeptia software is distributed into 14 separate microservices that are all running and can scale independently. Adeptia Connect application architecture ensures a highly scalable, high performance, reliable experience for our customers.

The data processing of files and APIs is the most processing intensive part of the Adeptia application, and this happens in the “Runtime Container.” The size and number of these containers characterizes the overall “concurrent processing capacity” of the application.

Adeptia runs performance tests of various data scenarios and provides these benchmarking results to estimate the processing capacity of differently sizes Adeptia deployments starting with a single two-core runtime container. This information is available in the Adeptia documentation.

We have found that a single 2-core runtime container can easily process hundreds of files and handle dozens of simultaneous API calls. This container, combined with Adeptia’s efficient technical architecture, provides significant processing capacity to handle large volumes of data and transactions.

• Actual processing capacity of a runtime container will vary by client because it is based on their use case parameters, such as batch or transactional data processing, size of files, peak data volumes, applications accessed, complexity of data validations, and transformation rules.
• In file-processing use cases, a single runtime container can handle hundreds of files per hour.
• In real-time, web-services use cases, a single runtime container can handle thousands of API calls per hour.
• Adeptia provides extensive information for optimizing performance, tuning, and best practices.

How do I know if I need more CPU cores or runtime containers?

Adeptia will work with you to size your environment before you make a purchase decision. If are are expecting a high volume of files and APIs to be handled at any time, more CPU cores (to increase runtime containers) for production environment may be needed. Adeptia monitors the application usage and capacity for our clients and makes recommendations. Clients may also decide to add additional CPU cores to their production environment as needed.

What if I need more nonproduction environments later on?

Clients may easily purchase additional nonproduction environments. Adeptia will charge pro-rated subscription fees for the additional non-production environment(s) for the rest of the year.

What if I need more features later on?

Clients can add more features by either purchasing the add-on features or by upgrading to another edition. Adeptia will charge pro-rated subscription fees for the additional features or edition for the rest of the year.

What is included in Technical Support?

Adeptia provides technical support to help clients use its product. Technical support covers:

• Answering any questions about how to use any functionality
• Guidance on how to troubleshoot problems
• Information about optimizing setup for performance and reliability
• Access to patches, updates, and new releases
• Access to Adeptia’s support website and technical forum
• Does not cover actually performing implementation, training, or consulting. Those are separately billed services

What are the different Tech Support options?

Adeptia offers two paid technical support options.

• Gold level: This is 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Central Time in the US.
• Platinum level: This is 24×7 support.

SLAs for these support levels are available upon request.

Where is the Technical Support team located?

Adeptia has a large team of software engineers focused on technical support. The team is trained and experienced in using Adeptia software technology. This team works for Adeptia from offices throughout the world.

Do I need to buy support every year?

Adeptia technical support is included with a subscription license. It can be renewed annually with your subscription.

Are Zoom sessions included in support?

Yes, the technical support team works closely with client users, and they often use live Zoom sessions to understand and help troubleshoot issues. Tech support does not include actual implementation or doing the work, so client users should not expect the tech support staff to build or configure anything. However, the team does review logs, error messages, and Zoom sessions to identify and resolve issues or provide guidance to client users.

What documentation does Adeptia provide? How is it accessed?

Adeptia provides extensive technical documentation, all of which is easily accessible online.

• Documentation
• How-to Video Tutorials

What professional services does Adeptia offer?

Adeptia has a professional services team with deep and extensive experience in data integration implementations to ensure success for our clients. Many of our team members have 10 to 15+ years of experience in challenging and complex integrations scenarios with large companies. The following professional services options are available:

• Training: Developer and business user training classes.
• Installation and Deployment: Hands-on installation assistance for smooth deployment.
• Architecture Assessment and Design: Assessment of current integration architecture and future needs, and identification of a long-term plan for successful rollout.
• Implementation Services: Assistance in development activities or a fully built-out solution.

What training options are offered?

Adeptia provides well-structured training materials and hands-on instruction to help client users get started.

• Developer training: 2- or 3-day hands-on instruction for developer and admin users.
• Business user training: 1-day training session

Training is typically delivered in video-conference sessions. Inquire with our services team if you have questions or special requirements.