Recently I wrote about a whitepaper called, “What to Look for in a Cloud Integration Solution.” It outlined 6 key factors as essential when evaluating software-as-a-service integration. If you’re a Salesforce customer digging through the very crowded AppExchange Integration and Data Management category, other than looking for volume and recency of 5-star customer reviews, here are some questions to ask a potential solution provider in these areas:
True Multitenant vs. Hosted Offering
- How quickly can you do a proof of concept?
- What is involved in implementation?
- How do you deliver upgrades?
Ease of Use
- How are your new customers brought onboard?
- How much training is required?
- Is there a community site to learn from others?
Try and Buy / Rapid Deployment
- Do you have a self-service trial on our own data (not demo data)?
- How long does it take to get up and running on our data?
- How quickly can we access additional capacity?
IT or LOB Usability
- How easy is it to create, manage and monitor data integration tasks?
- How will the service align with the data integration technologies we already have in house?
Scalability
- Will we need to acquire additional hardware and software to meet expanding demand?
- How easy is it to broaden our use of the service as our requirements grow?
Vendor Viability
- Who are your investors and when was your last round of funding?
- How many customers do you have?
- Is your company profitable?
In(tegrate) the Clouds 
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