Choosing a Control Plane
Once your integrations are deployed, you need a control plane to organize them into projects and environments, monitor their runtime state, manage their lifecycle, and control access. WSO2 Integrator has two: WSO2 Cloud - Integration Platform and the Integration Control Plane (ICP).
You do not pick a control plane independently of how you deploy. Where your integrations run decides how you manage them:
- Integrations you deploy to WSO2 Cloud are managed in WSO2 Cloud.
- Integrations you run on your own infrastructure (VMs, containers, Kubernetes, on-premises, private cloud, or air-gapped environments) are managed with the self-hosted Integration Control Plane.
Decide where to run first, in Deploy and Run. The control plane follows from that.
Manage on WSO2 Cloud
WSO2 Cloud is a fully managed SaaS offering. WSO2 operates the control plane and data plane infrastructure, so you deploy your integrations without provisioning or maintaining servers.
This is what you use when you:
- Get started immediately without any infrastructure setup.
- Use built-in autoscaling and scale-to-zero for HTTP-triggered integrations.
- Secure endpoints with API Key or OAuth2 without configuring an external identity provider.
- Use managed promotion workflows, including approval gates, to move integrations across environments.
- Store sensitive configuration values in a managed secret vault.
Managing integrations on WSO2 Cloud is covered in the WSO2 Cloud documentation: Manage on WSO2 Cloud.
Manage with the Integration Control Plane (ICP)
ICP is a self-hosted management server you install on your own infrastructure. It connects to your WSO2 Integrator runtimes over a dedicated registration port and provides a centralized dashboard, GraphQL API, and observability endpoints.
This is what you use when you:
- Run the control plane on your own infrastructure: on-premises, in your private cloud, or air-gapped.
- Keep all runtime metadata in a database you control (PostgreSQL, MySQL, or MSSQL).
ICP is documented in its own section, starting with Integration Control Plane.
Comparison
| Capability | WSO2 Cloud | ICP |
|---|---|---|
| Used when you deploy | To WSO2 Cloud | On your own infrastructure |
| Hosting | Fully managed by WSO2 | Self-hosted |
| Setup required | None | Install server, configure database |
| Autoscaling | Built-in | Managed by your infrastructure |
| Endpoint security | API Key and OAuth2, built-in | Managed by your infrastructure |
| Secret management | Managed secret vault | Managed by your infrastructure |
| Observability | Built-in logs and metrics | Requires OpenSearch integration |
| Data residency | WSO2 Cloud data plane or private data plane | Fully under your control |
What's next
- Deploy and Run — choose where your integrations run
- Manage on WSO2 Cloud — manage integrations deployed to WSO2 Cloud
- Install ICP — set up the self-hosted Integration Control Plane