3 Trends that are Changing the World of Data

In my last post, I wrote about the new data integration requirements. In this post I wanted to share a few points made recently in a TDWI institute interview with SnapLogic founder and CEO Gaurav Dhillon when he was asked:

What are some of the most interesting trends you’re seeing in the BI, analytics, and data warehousing space?

There are three trends that I believe are fundamentally changing the world of data.

The first is the shift to the cloud. Rapid provisioning, ease of use, and cost are just a few of the drivers as data gravity continues to shift.

(Data gravity means that when a large data set is sitting in a large Hadoop or Splunk instance in an on-premises system, it doesn’t make sense to load all that data into the cloud to run analytics functions. Instead, one would ship the function to the data and return results. Being able to do this seamlessly can greatly simplify integration pipelines.)

Also driving this trend is the fact that cloud data warehousing and analytics have moved from rogue departmental use cases to enterprise deployments.

The second trend is the data lake and how to complement, extend — and in some cases replace — the traditional data warehouse with a reference architecture that is built to handle all new and future sources and enable more proactive and predictive analytics.

The third trend is the Internet of Things (IoT). It’s already happening today in some industries with data velocity, variety, and, of course, volume. What’s more important, though, is the kinds of analytics and insights that will become possible because of IoT sensors, wearables, and devices — once organizations figure out how to separate signal from noise through the right data management techniques.

He was also asked about the drivers for modern integration platforms, whether you call it iPaaS or HIP or something else:

1. The end of the ETL and ESB cycle
2. The need for speed
3. Hybrid infrastructure

Be sure to check out the entire interview and share your feedback.

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.

It’s Time to Rethink Integration

Last week SnapLogic posted the company’s mission on their blog, which is focused on accelerating how enterprise integration technology is delivered in the enterprise. The company is growing rapidly and hiring. Here is the their mission statement:

It’s time to rethink integration.
Integrating data and applications with legacy products is slowing down your business.
What you’re running now is no longer running fast enough for today’s business needs.
But what if you could eliminate the pain of integration and get to its promise?
To prioritize outcomes over process.
To enable your enterprise with a modern solution.

With SnapLogic you can.

SnapLogic brings all your data together, at incredible speeds and
with an ease never known before.
Data, applications, and APIs—from any source, anywhere.
Instead of coding, you merely drag and drop intelligent connectors in the cloud.
They fit together seamlessly.
In a snap.

You’ll connect faster and more efficiently, enabling you to become a more agile business.
Whether it’s maximizing investments in big data, or getting new products to market faster.

Whatever your enterprise strategy, SnapLogic gets you there easier and quicker.
And wasn’t that what integration was supposed to do in the first place?
Don’t let your legacy integration solution be your legacy.
It’s time to let go of those old ideas.
It’s time to operate at the speed of modern business.

You can learn more about SnapLogic on the company’s website.

 

 

Addressing the Last Mile – Middleware in Focus

Check out this post by Glenn Donovan: The History of Middleware. From the enterprise service bus (ESB) to the integration competency center (ICC), he has a lot to say about the good, bad and ugly of legacy enterprise application integration (EAI) and extract, transform and load (ETL) technologies. The central theme – it’s about the need for simplicity and speed, which has become even more critical for successful cloud integration deployments. Here are a few noteworthy observations in the post:

On the bureaucracy of the ICC:

“Sure you could build competency centers and “factories” but to this day, such approaches end up creating more bureaucracy, more dependencies and complexity while adding less and less value compared to what a developer can build him/herself with RESTful services/micro-services, and most things one wants to integrate with today already have well defined APIs so it’s often much easier to connect and share data anyway.”

On the ESB:

“Along the way, a problem became obvious. The cost, expertise, complexity and time involved in building such elegantly designed and governed systems frameworks ran counter to building systems fast. A good developer could get something done that worked and was high quality without resorting to using all those WS standardized services and conforming to its structure.”

On the need for a new enterprise platform to replace the legacy ESB:

“I think many are ready to dump all that highly complex and expensive overhead which came along with messaging buses when an enterprise class platform comes along that enables them to do so.”

Simplicity = IT agility:

“This is all coming together now, so you will see growing interest in throwing out the old integration server/message bus architectures in organizations focused on transformation and agility as core values.”

Check out the entire article to understand the author’s point of view. As a veteran of the middleware industry, he’s looking at modern integration platform as a service (iPaaS) vendors like SnapLogic as having: “the potential  help IT with the “last mile” of cloud build-out in the enterprise, not just due its features, but rather because of the shift in software engineering and design occurring that started in places like Google, Amazon and Netflix – and startups that couldn’t afford and “enterprise technology stack” – and is now making its way into the enterprise.”

Hybrid Cloud Integration – Why It’s Different and Why It Matters

This week Carl Lehmann from 451 Research reviewed the trends, best practices and reference architecture for integration platform as a service (iPaaS) and hybrid cloud integration. Here’s the presentation, which also includes an overview of SnapLogic’s Elastic Integration Platform.

The Death of Traditional Integration

Recently I hosted a SnapLogic webinar featuring the company’s co-founder and CEO, Gaurav Dhillon, and industry analyst, author and practitioner David Linthicum called: The Death of Traditional Data Integration. The webinar was very well attended and the discussion was quite lively. I’ve posted sections of the transcript on the SnapLogic blog, you can also listen to the podcast on the company’s iTunes channel, and the slides are now on Slideshare. I’ve embedded the YouTube video below. Enjoy!

CIOs are Getting SMACT: #Social, #Mobile, #Analytics, #Cloud, #IoT

Check out this Infographic from SnapLogic – Why Are CIOs Getting SMACT?

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

7 Things You Should Know About SnapLogic’s Elastic Integration Platform

In a series of recent posts on the SnapLogic blog, I’ve been reviewing the primary requirements of a modern integration platform. In this post I outlined some of the key principles behind SnapLogic’s Elastic Integration Platform, as well as the most popular posts on the blog. (Not surprisingly, 3 of the 5 most popular posts were written by the company’s Chief Scientist.)

The presentation below provides an overview of 7 things you should know about SnapLogic’s elastic integration platform as a service (iPaaS):

7 Things You Should Know About the SnapLogic Elastic Integration Platform from SnapLogic, Inc.

6 Requirements of a Modern Integration Platform

In 2009 I worked with data and application integration guru David Linthicum on a whitepaper called, “What to Look for When Evaluating Cloud Integration Solutions.” The 6 requirements were:

1. True multitenant versus hosted offering
2. Ease of use
3. Try and buy / rapid deployment
4. IT or LOB usability
5. Scalability
6. Vendor viability

While I don’t think I’d change this list too much in 2014, I’ve been putting together a series of posts on the SnapLogic blog summarizing the requirements of a modern integration platform. Now commonly known as integration platform as a service (iPaaS), the 6 primary requirements are:

1. Fully-Functional Cloud-based Service (based on a Software-Defined Architecture)
2. Single Platform for Big Data, Application and API Integration
3. Elastic Scale
4. Built on Modern Standards (REST, JSON)
5. Broad Cloud and On-Premises Connectivity
6. Self-Service for Citizen Integrators

Let me know if you agree or disagree with the list. I’ve embedded a demonstration of the SnapLogic Elastic Integration Platform below if this is an area of cloud computing that is new to you.