Cloud Integration: Don’t Build a House without a Driveway

David Linthicum agrees with my Cloud Data Integration Predictions and Chris Boorman’s 2010 Predictions from Data Integration World. Check out what he has to say in his post, “Four Data Integration Predictions for 2010“:

“Cloud computing drives much of the growth of data integration. While we’ve not seen this as of yet, the continued interest in cloud computing will certainly drive a lot of data integration in 2010. The fact of the matter is that enterprises don’t think about data integration until they have already moved to the cloud. That’s like building a house without a driveway.”

Nice!

Just getting started with SaaS/Cloud integration? Here are a few resources that you may find useful from David Linthicum (sorry, but registration is required):

• What to Look for When Evaluating Integration as a Service
• Approaching SaaS Integration with Data Integration Best Practices and Technology
• Best Practices in Leveraging a Staging Area for SaaS-to-Enterprise Integration

Good luck with your new driveway!

Data Synchronization in the Cloud

“Now instead of our salesforce users having to enter data into two different systems and/or having to open up another system to check something, the data between the two systems is synced and single-sourced. No issues with duplications or conflicts.”

 Sound good? Check out this 5-star AppExchange review for the Data Synchronization Cloud Service.

Data Integration Cloud Platform as a Service

From today’s cloud data integration announcement:

“With an enterprise data integration as a service platform, developers and Systems Integrator (SI) partners tcan build, share and reuse custom data integration and data quality mappings and run them in the cloud.

• Developers can productively collaborate within IT teams to create reusable data integration and data quality mappings in the cloud or on premise.
• Business users can easily configure data rules themselves or run mappings built by IT using Informatica Cloud Services for self-service data integration.”

Partner and Customer Quotes:

“Integration remains a top challenge and priority as organizations become more involved in cloud and SaaS implementations.”

- Jeffrey M. Kaplan, Managing Director, THINKstrategies, Inc. and Founder of the SaaS Showplace

“…will dramatically simplify cloud-to-cloud and cloud to on-premise data integrations.”

- Henry Hai, Director SaaS Practice, Fujitsu America

“…we plan to develop re-usable templates to accelerate time to market and reduce total cost of ownership for our customers.”

- Michael J Urban, Managing Partner, ITB Consult

“ …the ability to develop more complex mappings and workflows and run them as custom services for line of business managers will allow us to continue to provide self-service, while IT remains in control”

- Stephen Brown, Technical Architect, Telegraph Media Group

Find out more about the integration platform as a service use cases, end points, and custom functions here.

Customer Master Data Integration: Microsoft Access and Salesforce.com

Recently I wrote about some of the most common use cases I’ve seen for Salesforce application and data integration. One of the most common is customer master data synchronization. Here’s a common scenario:

• You have Account and Contact customer master data sitting in a legacy Microsoft Access-based CRM system and you need to load it into the Contact object in salesforce.com (welcome to the cloud!)
• You need to quickly and easily connect to the Microsoft Access data and Salesforce.
• Data must be transformed before it’s loaded into Salesforce.
• Contacts and must be linked to the parent Account in Salesforce.
• Data integration tasks need to be scheduled to run at specific times.
• You want to create a nightly batch data integration job for dependent tasks.
• And finally you want to add new records to Microsoft Access and watch as they’re loaded into Salesforce.

Here’s how it looks with a multitenant, cloud-based data integration as a service solution that is designed for non-technical users:

Salesforce Integration Customer Success

Earlier this week I posted some of the more typical use cases I’ve seen for data integration as a service, specifically for salesforce.com customers. I want take a moment to highlight some of the amazing Salesforce customer feedback we’ve seen over the last few week for the AppExchange data synchronization service:

You check out all of the AppExchange reviews here and learn more about the multitenant Data Synchronization Service here.

DM Radio: Data as a Service

I’ll be participating in a DM Radio discussion today at 11:30am PST on the topic of data as a service. Here are the details:

With the recent surge in cloud computing, many service providers are starting to provide data on-demand, thus opening the world of high-powered analytics and other data-focused offerings to a host of organizations that previously couldn’t afford the cost of entry. Check out this episode of DM Radio to hear how savvy organizations are consuming data as a service.

Attendees will learn:

• How to handle integration and reconciliation challenges
• The pillars of Cloud Computing
• How the Cloud is evolving into a platform
• Various kinds of data being delivered as a service

 You can register here.

FTP Data Integration in the Cloud with Salesforce

Here’s a new demo of FTP cloud data integration with Salesforce. As this these 5-star Force.com AppExchange reviews note, the cloud-based data integration solution is, “simple, robust, and easy to use.”

Integrate Oracle E-Business Suite with Salesforce.com

Check out this comprehensive demonstration of integrating Oracle E-Business Suite with Salesforce in the cloud:

Cloud Integration Advice

I just came across a great post from a ”software insider” who’s point of view I respect. A couple of months back Forrester’s Ray Wang (rwang0 to his 2000+ Twitter followers) recommended the following advice when you’re considering a data integration as a service solution – focus on:

• Data mapping;
• Business process orchestration; and
• Quality of service.

I’d also add vendor vision, strength of the underlying platform, multitenancy, and viability…but I digress.

Ray’s bottom line is key:

“The successful adoption of SaaS solutions will transform usage from purpose built point solutions to integration into mission critical processes.  The result – SaaS integration will emerge as a key discipline in the overall enterprise app strategies of enterprises who seek to manage a portfolio of provisioned services.”

 Is data integration the key to ultimate SaaS application adoption and success? Read the full post here and let me know what you think.

The Importance of Data Integration in the Era of Cloud Computing

Earlier today I stumbled across this succinct post by David Linthicum on the ebizQ site, “Leveraging Information and Intelligence.”  Great opening line:

“As cloud computing begins to gain traction within the enterprise, there seems to be a refocus on data integration.”

Agreed.

David makes the point that integration often goes unaccounted for in terms of cost and complexity as more and more applications move to the cloud. But as he points out, experience shows that “data integration is systematic to everything.”  So as you move more apps to the cloud and begin to think about loading, replicating, synchronizing, monitoring, and integrating data across multiple systems (including on-premise of course), here are some of the on-demand data integration ROI benefits to consider:

• Business user graphical interface (users should be able to get up and running quickly with minimal training)
• No coding, no software (therefore less IT involment required)
• Rapid deployment (go live in in days or weeks)
• Upgrades at no cost (look for multitenancy)
• Security and data integrity (look for SAS-70 compliance)
• Real time monitoring and scheduling over the web
• Connectivity to a broad range of business applications
• Vendor visibility into your usage and adoption (aka a focus on customer success)
• Subscription pricing (capex vs. opex)

I hope you’ve enjoyed the first week of this blog. I’ve also extended the SaaS Business Intelligence LinkedIn group to include Integration. You’re welcome to join the discussion there as well.

Have a great weekend!