Nucleus Research iPaaS Value Matrix 2026: agents change the buying decision
Nucleus Research's 2026 iPaaS Value Matrix names Boomi, Oracle and Tray.ai among the Leaders and says MCP is now standard. What buyers should take from it.
Analyst reports are a blunt tool for choosing a platform, but they are useful for seeing what the market thinks matters. On 14 April, Nucleus Research published its 2026 Technology Value Matrix for iPaaS. Its main message is that the buying decision has changed: connector breadth still matters, but buyers now also have to judge how well a platform supports AI agents.
What the report says
The Value Matrix places vendors by the usability and functionality customers get from the platform. The 2026 edition sorts 17 vendors into four groups:
- Leaders: Boomi, Infor, Oracle, Salesforce (Informatica) and Tray.ai
- Experts: IBM, Salesforce (MuleSoft), Talend and TIBCO
- Accelerators: Microsoft, SnapLogic, Workato and Zapier
- Core Providers: Celigo, Jitterbit, n8n and SAP
Nucleus highlights three trends. Integration is getting more complex, and iPaaS is becoming the central place to manage connections between applications. Agentic AI is turning integration platforms from middleware into an orchestration layer for automated workflows. And support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP) is now standard among most vendors.
The analyst behind the report, Alexander Wurm, sums it up: buyers now need to weigh agent development, AI governance and protocol-level interoperability alongside consolidation and connectors.
Why it matters
The most useful point is that MCP support is no longer a differentiator. When nearly everyone has it, the questions move on: how well are MCP servers governed, who can publish them, and how is traffic logged? The same shift happened with REST APIs fifteen years ago.
It is also worth noting how differently the analysts see the market. Salesforce appears twice, with Informatica among the Leaders and MuleSoft among the Experts. Microsoft is an Accelerator here, while it is usually among the leaders in other reports. Different methods give different pictures, which is a good reason never to use a single report as the answer.
How to use it
A Value Matrix is based on what customers say about value and ease of use, so it can be a helpful counterweight to reports that focus more on vision and market share. Use it as a way to build a shortlist, not to decide.
- Compare with other reports. Look at where your candidates appear across several analysts. Big differences are worth asking about.
- Test the agent claims. Ask each vendor to show how an agent is built, tested, governed and monitored on the platform, using your own case.
- Ask about governance. Since MCP is now standard, ask how MCP servers and agents are registered, secured and logged.
See also our guide How to choose an iPaaS in 2026.
Sources
This post was written with AI assistance and reviewed by the editor before publishing.