Orchestration vs. integration
Integration is about moving data between systems. Orchestration is about coordinating what happens once the data moves — deciding who acts on it, when, with what authority, how the result gets observed.
The distinction matters because the job has changed. Legacy iPaaS was built for integration as the primary task. Modern enterprise work needs more:
- Workflows triggered by events, running decisions, handing off to humans or agents as needed.
- AI agents reading from and writing to the same systems that integrations touch.
- Governance and audit covering all of the above, uniformly.
- Data preparation, integration, automation, and agents all under one set of controls.
That’s orchestration. Integration is a subset of it.
Why Tray.ai leads with this frame
Calling Tray.ai “iPaaS” undersells what the platform does. It covers integration (and well — see Intelligent iPaaS). It also covers agent building (Merlin), MCP governance (Agent Gateway), data preparation (Data Engineering), and enterprise governance across all of it.
Enterprise orchestration for data and AI is the frame. It’s broader than iPaaS, more architectural than “automation,” and closer to how enterprises actually use the platform in 2026.
The practical difference
On an orchestration platform, a single coherent motion can:
- Trigger on an event (Salesforce opportunity closed).
- Prepare data for an agent (pull related account records, clean them).
- Invoke an AI agent (draft a tailored onboarding plan).
- Loop in a human for approval.
- Execute the plan across multiple systems.
- Log every step with full audit.
On a classic iPaaS, steps 3, 4, and 6 each require stitching in separate products. Orchestration is what happens when all six are native primitives.