The New Data Integration Requirements

This week SnapLogic posted a presentation of the 10 Modern Data Integration Platform Requirements on the company’s blog. They are:

1. Application integration is done primarily through REST & SOAP services
2. Large-volume data integration is available to Hadoop-based data lakes or cloud-based data warehouses
3. Integration has to support the continuum of data velocities starting from batch all the way to continuous streams
4. Integration is event-based rather than clock-driven
5. Integration is primarily document- centric
6. Integration is hybrid and spans cloud-cloud and cloud-ground scenarios
7. Integration itself has to be accessible through SOAP/REST APIs
8. Integration is all about connectivity… connectivity connectivity
9. Integration has to be elastic
10. Integration has to be delivered as a service

I’ve embedded the presentation below.

Integration Innovation – Why Legacy ETL and EAI Vendors are Struggling

I wrote a post on the SnapLogic blog this week about the wave of innovation that is happening in the data and application integration market and introduced two new data management acronyms (like we need more, I know) – OETL and OEAI:

• Old Extract, Transform, Load
• Old Enterprise Application Integration

There’s no shortage articles (and books) on disruptive innovation and why it’s so hard for on-premises software vendors to transition to the new era of social, mobile, analytics and big data, and the internet of things (SMACT). Here are 10 reasons (some unique and some applicable to all mature technology vendors) why legacy data integration and middleware vendors are struggling to re-invent themselves:

• Cannibalization of the Core On-Premises Business
• Heritage Matters in the Cloud
• EAI without the ESB
• Beyond ETL
• Point to Point Misses the Point
• Franken-tegration
• Big Data Integration is not Core…or Cloud
• An On-Ramp to On-Prem
• Focus and DNA

You can read the entire post here. Let me know if you agree / disagree – I clearly have somewhat of a bias.

Here’s a powerpoint I worked on in 2007 that continues to be appropriate today.

SaaS Cannibalization And Civil War Within from Darren Cunningham

Unfinished Business: Gaurav Dhillon Introduces @SnapLogic Integration Cloud

Gaurav Dhillon co-founded Informatica in 1992 and ran the company until 2004. In 2006 he co-founded SnapLogic, a data integration start-up in San Mateo, California. In 2010 he took over as the company’s Chairman and CEO and re-focused the company on tackling the emerging cloud data and application integration challenge in the enterprise.

Today SnapLogic introduced the SnapLogic Integration Cloud, with a focus on three key areas:

• Faster application and data integration in a single “snap and assemble” HTML5 web interface
• Multi-point integration with advanced orchestration for 160+ pre-built “Snaps”
• Modern integration with the introduction of the Snaplex, which scales out elastically

You can read more about the Winter 2014 release of the multi-tenant integration platform as a service (iPaaS) here. Here’s a video of Gaurav introducing the company out summarizing the importance of the right approach to cloud data and application integration in the API economy. He’s also presenting on that topic on a GigaOM webinar with David Linthicum later this week.

Related articles

• How will we integrate all these enterprise cloud apps? (pandodaily.com)
• SnapLogic Delivers RESTful PaaS Environment for the Cloud (programmableweb.com)
• SnapLogic (officially) raises $10M; investment titan Ben Horowitz joins board (venturebeat.com)
• SnapLogic Accelerates Cloud Integration Innovation and Momentum with Record Q3 Results (virtual-strategy.com)

The Shift to Cloud Business Intelligence

In 2006 I posted a presentation on Slideshare called, “What is Driving the Shift to On-Demand BI?“ While it might have been a little early in terms of cloud business intelligence adoption, looking at it today shows that most of the industry analyst predictions were actually quite conservative when it comes to cloud adoption in the enterprise. I listed the drivers for the shift to analytics as a cloud service as:

1. It just makes sense
2. Simple, simple, simple
3. OLTP –> OLAP
4. Because Gartner said so!
5. “Date a fad, marry a trend.” (with acknowledgement to @kellblog of course)

Here’s the presentation.

On Demand BI from Darren Cunningham

Recently Amazon.com announced that Redshift, their data warehouse solution, is the company’s fastest growing AWS service. Over 1000 global customers are moving significant business intelligence initiatives to Amazon’s data warehouse in the cloud. This video does a pretty nice job of explaining how it works and why the value proposition is so compelling.

Related articles

• The Next Mega-Trend in Business Intelligence: So What Are Actionable Insights Anyway? (business2community.com)
• Business Intelligence Market to reach $20.81 Billion by 2018 at a 8.3% CAGR – New Report by MarketsandMarkets (prweb.com)
• Cloud Hosting Opens Possibilities for Business Intelligence (thewhir.com)

Gaurav Dhillon: Integration at Cloud Speed

In this video, SnapLogic CEO (and co-founder of Informatica) Gaurav Dhillon talks about the mission of his company and what’s changed in the data integration market.

Related articles

• SnapLogic Ramps Up with Support for Tableau Software’s Online Launch (hispanicbusiness.com)
• How will we integrate all these enterprise cloud apps? (pandodaily.com)
• The top 10 ‘arms merchants’ of the cloud (venturebeat.com)

Governed Self Service: Applying Lean Principles to Cloud Integration

Today I moderated a webinar focused on Eliminating SaaS Sprawl with Cloud Integration. We focused on the usual challenges of silos and data fragmentation, but also focused on the opportunity to apply Lean Integration principles in a next generation integration Center of Excellence (CoE) or integration competency center (ICC).  The conversation centered on the need for speed and business agility, while also maintaining strong governance and control in IT.  What I call “Governed Self Service.”

David Lyle, co-author of the book on Lean Integration, pointed out that integration is a concept that mirrors the “just-in-time” (JIT) manufacturing principles of the automotive industry. With JIT manufacturing, the necessary components to assemble a car are sourced throughout the supply chain and brought onto the factory floor just before they are needed thus minimizing the amount of time a worker has to wait for the necessary part. Lean Integration transforms organizational processes and relies on leading-edge technology for automation and reuse to systematically reduce costs and accelerate delivery. His presentation summarized how the objectives of cloud integration are one and the same as Lean Integration:

• Eliminate waste
• Increase value for end-user customers
• Drive continuous improvement

Mark Murray from the Informatica Cloud team, then delivered a powerful cloud integration demonstration that focused on re-usable templates and the concept of having a central instance and sub-instances that can be deployed out to the divisions and lines of business, while maintaining centralized administration  Pretty powerful stuff!

I’ve embedded the webinar in it’s entirety below:

Related articles

• From SaaS Spree to SaaS Sprawl to SaaS Sanity? (cloudintegration.wordpress.com)

Cloud Integration is Suddenly Cool

I started a blog post with an “is it me?” question once and got one comment:  “Yes, it’s you.”

With that as an intro and a risk, let me ask: “Is it me or is cloud integration suddenly cool?”

Okay, maybe “cool” is the wrong word. But take a look at the trend:

So what’s so hot about cloud integration? In May 2010 I wrote about Phase Two Cloud Integration and The Dangers of Delaying Cloud Integration.

What’s changed?

Here’s how I answered the question in a recent interview:

“The first wave of cloud adoption was driven by software as a service (SaaS) applications. Pioneered by companies like salesforce.com, these applications typically were sold directly to the business, with minimal (if any) involvement from the traditional IT department. While there was a great deal of small to mid-sized company adoption early on, there was just as much departmental purchasing taking place in larger companies due to the benefits of ease of use, the promise of rapid deployments and the operational expense appeal of the subscription pricing model. On the IT side of the fence, I would characterize this as the “cloud skeptical” phase. On the business side, it was more like the Wild West. This is where cloud-based data integration first gained a foothold. Mid-sized companies and autonomous divisions and departments had limited technical resources but needed many of the same capabilities – data migration, synchronization, replication, and of course data quality.

Fast forward to today and IT organizations are increasingly becoming “cloud first.” Cloud deployments are becoming more complex, whether they are software, platform or infrastructure as a service; and the importance of broader cloud data management strategy is now recognized as the critical enabler of success. It’s a now truly a hybrid IT world. To avoid the perils of data fragmentation and “SaaS sprawl” business and IT organizations are starting to align around the need for trusted data.”

Do you agree? Disagree?  Anyone got a comment?

Related articles

• Cloud app integration: Incredibly important, but also problematic (cloudave.com)
• Are Enterprises Embracing Cloud? (cloudcomputing.sys-con.com)
• Salesforce Customers are Asking for Big Data Management #DF12 (cloudintegration.wordpress.com)

Salesforce Customers are Asking for Big Data Management #DF12

Two things stuck out for me at Dreamforce 2012:

1. What an amazing ecosystem Salesforce has built. The Cloud expo was packed with high-quality booths and there were over 3000 people at the partner keynote! Congratulations to the partner success team and kudos on the newly designed Appexchange.
2. How important cloud integration / enterprise connectivity has become to Salesforce customers, partners and prospects. These two slides from that same partner keynote say it all:

When it comes to the back-office, Big Data Management apps top the list of Salesforce customer requirements. Oh, and by the way, all new cloud applications must connect across the business.

Today two post-Dreamforce 2012 articles caught my attention that address the need for cloud integration head on. In his post – Plumbing the Salesforce Clouds is Your Business, Mark Smith from Ventana Research notes:

“The challenges your organization faces with data are getting larger, and the financial benefits of data in the cloud, such as reduced TCO and reduced implementation fees, are substantive. Too much time and too many resources are wasted in manual approaches where data is transitioned inconsistently and incorrectly. Automation helps organizations rationalize their overall information management efforts.”

Joshua Greenbaum at Enterprise Applications Consulting has this to say his his article, Salesforce.com, Enterprise Platforms, and the End of the End of Software:

“And the tools are there, or on the way. Hence the refrigerator pitch, though it was interestingly devoid of details on just how easy it will be to build an integration framework that could tie together a Pandora-like pure cloud environment or a more common hybrid cloud/on-premise environment. But heck, that’s really hard. It took SAP years to get NetWeaver out of slideware mode and into simple and easy to implement mode, despite all their efforts. So I don’t expect Saleforce.com to settle this issue in just one Dreamforce. It will take a while, no doubt.”

I’ll write about the Informatica Cloud integration and MDM session later this week on the Perspective blog. In the meantime, I’ve embedded the slides below so you can see for yourself how three enterprise organizations have taken advantage of data integration, data quality and master data management technology to drive overall Salesforce adoption and success. It’s Big Cloud Data Management in action!

Power the Connected Enterprise with Cloud Integration and Master Data Management (MDM) from Darren Cunningham

Related articles

• Salesforce.com reveals brief roadmap for AppExchange through 2013 (zdnet.com)
• Dreamforce 2012: Salesforce.com Launches Dropbox Enterprise Rival Chatterbox (techweekeurope.co.uk)
• Dreamforce 2012: Betting On Social Enterprise (cloudave.com)
• Salesforce.com’s New Social Strategy is Brilliant, Here’s Why (studentforce.wordpress.com)

Building Integration Into Your Cloud Apps and Platforms

Last week I hosted an Informatica Cloud webinar that featured speakers from salesforce.com and Xactly that focused on building next generation cloud applications and platforms. I’m trying really hard not to use the term “SMAC Stack,”  but it is truly all about ensuring your solutions are built for Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud…not to mention Big Data. I’ll post the recording later this week – there was a good discussion about the importance of multitenancy, which as the comments from this post indicate continues to be a hot topic of debate. Are you considering the building blocks of Social Enterprise apps? Are you building interoperability and integration into your strategy from the outset?

Building Next Generation Cloud Apps: Salesforce, Informatica, Xactly from Darren Cunningham

Related articles

• Integration Platform as a Service Announced (cloudintegration.wordpress.com)
• Cloud Integration in the Third Platform Era (cloudintegration.wordpress.com)
• You Can Build Apps: No Code Required (blogs.salesforce.com)

Executive Megatrends Panel – Informatica World 2012

This industry panel was fairly typical in that it focused on social, mobile, cloud computing and Big Data – the megatrends of technology in 2012. What I thought was  unique about this discussion, is that it featured different, lively and somewhat contentious points of view. Instead of violent agreement, there was actually some great discussion and different perspectives on the technology industry were represented. The panel was moderated by R “Ray” Wang from Constellation Research and featured executives from EMC, Informatica, Google and Salesforce.com.