Tag Archives: integration as a service
Is The PATRIOT Act Stifling Cloud Adoption Outside Of The US?
According to recent Forrester research, “security concerns” and “integration challenges with other applications” are the primary reasons firms aren’t interested in software as a service (SaaS). This week Forrester’s Stefan Reid wrote about the Informatica Cloud Summer 2010 release and pointed out another reason: The USA PATRIOT Act. (more…)
Data Integration: Maximizing Your Return On Cloud
Gartner published two press releases this month that speak to both the acceleration of software as a service (SaaS) application adoption and the challenges faced by enterprise IT. We’ve all seen (and experienced) the phenomenal growth of companies like salesforce.com and so the prediction that Worldwide Cloud Services Market to Surpass $68 Billion in 2010 wasn’t a big surprise. It was a more cautious Gartner announcement which noted “many of the bad practices that occurred in the on-premises world are now moving their way into SaaS,” that caught my attention. (more…)
Integration as a Cloud Service: Just Plug it In!
Today we announced Informatica Cloud Summer 2010. Powered by the Informatica Cloud Platform, customers and partners can build and share custom integrations for applications such as Salesforce, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, Xactly, Right 90, Big Machines and numerous others. Informatica Cloud Summer 2010 extends this capability by introducing pre-packaged data quality and B2B data transformation plug-ins building towards our vision of a data integration marketplace. (more…)
SaaS Integration Uses Cases That Don’t Involve SaaS Application Data
Last week I wrote that a software as a service (SaaS) data integration solution does not have to be used for cloud-based data. The post highlighted some of the questions that information architects, data integration developers and Informatica customers and partners in general ask when they learn more about the architecture of Informatica Cloud Services. Here are two use cases I’ve seen for data integration delivered as an on-demand service that are driven by the IT organization and don’t involve cloud-based applications like Salesforce.com:
Cloud Data Integration: Not Just For Cloud-Based Data
Over the past few weeks I’ve been talking to a lot of Informatica customers about data integration delivered as an on-demand service. We’ve been hosting a Breakfast in the Cloud event in many cities as part of the Informatica 9 World Tour and the interest in the topic of cloud integration has been overwhelming. We always spend quite a bit of time reviewing the architecture of Informatica Cloud Services to customers:
- A Secure Agent is downloaded to sit behind your firewall (or it could be running in a cloud environment).
- With the enterprise-class performance of Informatica PowerCenter, it is the Secure Agent that does all of the heavy lifting. It is a small footprint that is self-upgrading.
- A multitenant repository and an easy-to-use data integration interface designed for business self-service are delivered on demand. (You can watch a demo on our YouTube Channel.)
- Data is not staged in the Informatica Cloud. Instead a direct connection is established between the Secure Agent and Cloud apps or between applications, databases and files that are on premises.
It’s the last point that is often most surprising. Here are some of the questions that inevitably ensue when the lightbulb goes off: (more…)
Will Data Governance Slow Down Or Accelerate Cloud Adoption?
Recently I outlined Five Ways to Avoid a Cloud Data Disaster. Well, according to recent Ponomen Institute research, ”Nearly three out of four (73 percent) respondents say that adoption of cloud-based applications will have a significant impact on end users’ ability to circumvent existing access policies.” Are we on the verge of something cataclysmic or is there an opportunity lurking in this potential crisis?
Cloud Integration Best Practices
Last week I participated in ebizQ’s “Cloud QCamp”, which included a podcast and a best-practice cloud integration webinar with Amazon.com and Dave Linthicum. Kurt Messersmith from Amazon Web Services gave an overview of Amazon’s “on-demand infrastructure for hosting web-scale solutions” and provided some enlightening statistics on their bandwidth usage and growth since it was introduced in 2006. He reviewed the key attributes of cloud computing reviewed some of the diverse enterprise use cases for infrastructure as a service (IaaS). They are:
Cloud Integration: Wilford Brimley, The Achilles Heel And One Big Buzzkill
Recently Dave Linthicum has been writing more and more about the importance of data integration to cloud computing success. A few months ago he wrote about the integration challenges of cloud computing, which made me wonder if he was becoming the Wilford Brimley of the cloud reminding us all to eat our oatmeal. Earlier this month he referred to data integration as the “Achilles Heel” of cloud computing in a post which has led to some interesting comments and a few interesting articles. And finally last week he wrote about the cloud data integration buzzkill in a great InfoWorld post that outlined the common scenario where “cloud euphoria” is disrupted when these awful words are uttered once your first SaaS application is successfully implemented:
What about integrating the data back in the enterprise? How is our data in the cloud going to sync up with our other core enterprise systems?” (more…)
Breakfast In The Cloud
Over the past few weeks we’ve been talking to Informatica customers about cloud integration at the Informatica 9 World Tour events. In most of the cities, we’re hosting a Cloud Breakfast to dive in to what Gartner has listed as one of the top 10 strategic technologies for 2010. Not surprisingly, interest has been widespread. Attendees include people in IT and line of business (LOB) roles; people with PowerCenter skills and long-time Informatica Cloud customers; CRM administrators and IT architects; sales and marketing operations; ISVs and quite a few consultants.
One thing that they all have in common is that they’re thinking about the opportunities and challenges that the shift to cloud computing represents. As one attendee put it, “we can either get on the train or get run over by it!”
HealthDetail Turns To The Cloud For Sales Growth
The only way for HealthDetail to hold or increase margins was to think differently. The company’s provider directory business supplies accurate and compliant healthcare directories for Medicaid and other health insurers. The problem was that the volume of data coming in and the breadth of different sources it was derived from threatened to overwhelm the existing database. HealthDetail could either invest in dedicated database administration resources, at great expense, or consider a more innovative solution: cloud-based data integration.