An iPaaS gives integration teams a hosted environment to connect cloud and self-hosted applications without building every interface from scratch. Typical features include connectors for common applications, data mapping, workflow automation, API management and monitoring. Common uses are syncing customer records between a CRM and an ERP, or passing orders from an online store into fulfillment.
Some iPaaS products include EDI capabilities, but they are general-purpose by design. They move and transform data well. They usually leave the trading partner side to you: onboarding and testing trading partners, managing each one’s specific requirements, supporting non-EDI suppliers and customers, and checking whether a transaction makes business sense against the original order.
That gap matters in supply chains, where the hard part is rarely the connection itself. It is getting many different trading partners to send complete, correct data and resolving exceptions when they don’t. B2B integration and managed EDI approaches focus on that trading partner layer.