Software-as-a-service levels the playing field for small and midsize businesses, but what about all of those on-premises apps you're not ready to ditch? Can they play together? Companies including Boomi, Cast Iron, and SnapLogic are working to bring the cloud down to earth.
When Awana, a nonprofit organization providing services to 15,000 churches in more than 110 countries, wanted to adopt customer relationship management (CRM) software, Judi Smith, director of strategic services, faced a familiar business challenge: What would work with the company's existing software investments, including its JD Edwards ERP system?
For Streamwood, Ill.-based Awana, which has about 600 employees, the shortlist of CRM options included Microsoft CRM, Salesforce.com, and SugarCRM. Yet none of them would work with JD Edwards from the get-go. Ultimately, however, Smith identified another approach: using technology from a third party -- in this case, an appliance from Mountain View, Calif.-based Cast Iron Systems -- to integrate JD Edwards with Salesforce, Awana's CRM selection. All told, the integration work took only two weeks and allowed Awana to sidestep a $350,000 JD Edwards software upgrade it otherwise would have required to gain desired Web services and XML interface capabilities.
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Like Awana, most small and midsize businesses are eyeing one or more software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, yet have already made numerous investments in on-premises software. And despite the potential cost upsides of making the move to SaaS, one crucial success factor for running part or all of your business in the cloud is going to be the ability to tie cloud computing applications to on-premises systems.
Recognizing that obstacle, three software and hardware vendors -- Boomi, Cast Iron, and SnapLogic -- have their sights set on solving SaaS integration challenges. While their approaches differ for on-premises software, hosted integrations, and even on-premises appliances, these vendors can all help companies integrate their business software, whether it lives on-premises or "in the clouds."
Integration: The Achilles' Heel Of SaaS
Many small and midsize businesses are now running some or all of their business using cloud computing applications. Yet, while quick adoption and low cost may be highlights of using SaaS applications, integration is not. "The Achilles' heel for SaaS historically has been integrating with the rest of the enterprise," says Chandar Pattabhiram, Cast Iron's VP of product marketing,
The state of integration gives many potential SaaS adopters pause. Indeed, a recent Forrester Research survey of companies' SaaS attitudes found integration was the most common concern for the 38% of businesses that said they had no plans to adopt SaaS applications.
Furthermore, SaaS applications can't just go hauling out data from inside your firewall. "You prevent that, just as a policy; never will anyone get through my firewall to my application to access my data," says Chris Marino, CEO of San Mateo, Calif.-based SnapLogic. But at some point, many companies do want their SaaS applications to communicate with systems located inside the firewall. "How do you solve that problem?" Marino asks. "You need integration technology."
Configuration, Not Coding
How can SaaS integrators help?
Mountain View, Calif.-based Cast Iron's pitch is "configuration, not coding, for doing the integration," and that's the big picture of what SaaS integration offers: that businesses -- especially small and midsize companies with scarce IT talent -- don't have to hand-code or directly customize middleware.
As noted, precise offerings vary by vendor. For example, Berwyn, Pa.-based Boomi offers Atom, a small, runtime, autonomous integration element that resides on premises and connects with the Boomi on Demand service for integrating with other on-premises and SaaS applications, including Oracle, Peachtree, PeopleSoft, QuickBooks, and SAP. Cast Iron, meanwhile, sells appliances and also a hosted synchronization service to integrate numerous on-premises, business-to-business, and SaaS applications. And SnapLogic offers software -- a data integration framework, as well as preconfigured "solution packs" -- to integrate on-premises software as well as SaaS offerings, such as Salesforce and Amazon.com's hosted processing service, Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).
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