Cloud App Integration .com

Why Google, Amazon, and the like may shirk the push for standardization (CloudTweaks)

Cloud integration standards have long been clamored for, but apart from occasional rallying cries around certain APIs, standardization has not gotten very far. Sourya at CloudTweaks.com has a hypothesis why: A decrease in their ability to lock-in customers, and diminished power at the negotiating table. Read the full write-up for more.

We talk with the CEO of cloud integration provider Scribe Software about trends and user needs

As cloud application integration demand increases and users look for more efficient ways to bring systems together, integration providers must continuously refine their offerings. We spoke with Lou Guercia, CEO and President of Scribe Software, about how his company responded to the ever-changing market.

Read the full interview below: Read more… »

Recent releases target companies that look simplify cloud application integration

Blogger Michael Vizard has recently taken a look at how several companies, including Mulesoft, Aria Systems, have used subscription-based services to build their business.

Hollis Tibbets at ebizQ has picked up on the trend as well. He explains how the cloud application integration market is growing rapidly—just as cloud data integration did over the last few years. The key to growth, says Tibbets, is that providers are moving away from the integration-platform-as-a-service (iPaas) and offering the integration itself as a service with the help of common APIs and plugins.

The following was contributed by Clark Newby, Senior Vice President of Marketing at SnapLogic.

At SnapLogic, we’re obsessed with the exciting opportunities presented by SaaS applications, and we closely follow how companies are merging these solutions into their IT portfolios. In order to get a quantitative look at the “state of integration” today, we recently commissioned an Application Connection Priorities report, which highlights trends in the integration goals, needs and challenges of companies in 2011 and beyond.

We found that companies are primarily focused on integrating business intelligence and analytics (39 percent), productivity and collaboration (36 percent), sales (34 percent), and financial applications (28 percent) over the next 12 months. This reflects the growing adoption of newer technologies like Birst, Google Apps, Salesforce, and FinancialForce.com. Integration is a key step in the process of replacing cumbersome enterprise application stacks with these flexible SaaS offerings, and it will become even more important as IT portfolios expand to include niche SaaS applications in additional functional areas. Read more… »

We talk with Mike Hoskins, CTO at Pervasive Software, about Hadoop and Big Data

With the digitization of communication has come an exponential increase in data production. But the relational database, still the primary means of data storage for companies around the world, was not designed to handle the volume and types of data created by mobile technology, social networking sites, and internet applications.

Hadoop, a platform for organizing and managing so-called “big data,” emerged from engineers at Yahoo! over five years ago and has since grown into a viable alternative to the relational database. We recently spoke with Mike Hoskins, CTO of Pervasive Software, about Hadoop. Hoskins also runs the Pervasive Innovation Lab, where he and colleagues have been working with Hadoop for several years. Hadoop is now maintained by the Apache Foundation. Read more… »

Public cloud adoption growth will result from personnel trickle-up

While many organizations have experimented with cloud, few have transitioned major IT operations to it. We spoke recently with Paul Fremantle, CTO at cloud middleware provider WSO2, about cloud adoption trends. WSO2 recently released Stratos 1.5, a comprehensive Platform as a Service (PaaS) designed to help users build and run enterprise level cloud applications.

Fremantle believes that as employees use cloud in their personal lives, trust in the cloud will grow and manifest in the enterprise. “People’s own comfort level is influenced by day to day usage,” said Fremantle. “I used Gmail for a very long time, so when it came to moving some WSO2 infrastructure onto Google I was comfortable because Google had proven its trustworthiness.”

Fremantle sees that same transfer of comfort in other situations. “I was at a conference and a speaker asked, ‘How many developers have used their own credit card to buy an instance on Amazon and test something because your work wasn’t providing you what you needed?’ Many people raised their hands,” said Fremantle.

But Fremantle said a shift in cloud adoption will come from more than just familiarity. Personal cloud usage also facilitates initiative. “These are the people who are going to get promoted. They’re the ones getting the job done,” said Fremantle. “Already you’re seeing people in management positions who were doing that 3 or 4 years ago. They’re the guys who are going to say ‘Yup, let’s move it to Amazon.’”

Growing comfort levels with cloud computing extend beyond developers. “There are many business people who are now getting comfortable with Salesforce, Google spreadsheets, Quickbooks Online, etcetera,” said Fremantle. “They’re getting to the point where they can say I’ve used this stuff, I trust it. And so they’re much more amenable to a high level sale.”

WSO2 Stratos 1.5 was released last week and includes a multi-tenant enterprise service bus (ESB), a complex event processing engine (CEP), data as a service tools for SQL and NoSQL databases, and other cloud technologies. We spoke with Paul Fremantle earlier this month about cloud application governance.

Organizations of all size recognize the need for application integration governance

When it comes to application integration, governance may not be the first technology that comes to mind. Still, it’s an important part of the integration process, and governance technologies are seeing wider user as service-oriented architecture and cloud computing adoption grows.

“A couple of years ago only very large organizations were pushing governance, and it was very much from a top down approach,” said Paul Fremantle, CTO of enterprise service bus and middleware provider WSO2. “We’re beginning to now see everybody wanting an answer.”

WSO2 released a new version of its governance registry last week. Fremantle said that over 90% of users of the WSO2 ESB use a governance registry alongside it.

“What you want to do well with governance is make sure people go through the right review process before they publish a service to the ESB,” said Fremantle. “Typically you want to have a flow from design to development to unit test and system test then onto production.

“To move it from one thing to another you want to have a checklist,” said Fremantle. “Are [developers] reusing schema, or using new schema that has the same data but a different format? Did they go through the review process? Have they got the right security policy on this service?”

Rise of public APIs driving governance and ESB adoption

Fremantle said the recent push towards using public application programming interfaces [APIs] for integration is not much different from the rise of SOA and ESBs. “An API is just a service,” said Fremantle. “The whole drive to APIs is having a big impact on this space.”

SnapLogic VP explains how growing number of data sources creates need for specialized integration

As the number data types and applications proliferates, cloud integration vendors recognize that they cannot provide integrations for every possible scenario. Instead, they are creating platforms for third parties to develop and share custom integration services and tools.

We recently spoke with Clark Newby, Senior Vice President of Product Marketing at SnapLogic, about using a marketplace to deliver integration services. SnapLogic launched its SnapStore integration marketplace in April of 2010.

“In the old days you’d have SAP, Siebel, PeopleSoft, maybe an Oracle database, and you’d connect those three or four things and be done,” said Newby. “What we’re seeing is a burgeoning number of data sources.”

The myriad types of data make it difficult for vendors to create a sufficient number of integration options. “You have more narrowly focused SaaS applications, the social media stream—you have more data sources than ever before,” said Newby. “No single company can possibly develop all the different connectors to all these different data sources.”

To meet the demand for specialized integration tools, Newby’s company created a model based on the iPhone App Store. Both SnapLogic and third party developers can create applications designed to perform a specific type of integration, then offer it through the SnapStore for sale and download. As in Apple’s App Store, all applications are subject to approval.

Newby said that while this may limit the number of integration applications available, it ensures quality and functionality. “I see others out there in the market doing more of a craigslist-style marketplace,” said Newby. “That’s not us. Every single snap in the Snapstore uses the same underlying API and a standard open development environment.”

Many integration vendors tap into the integration marketplace model

SnapLogic’s SnapStore was an early entry to the integration services marketplace marketplace. Other companies are beginning to create their own platforms for developing and sharing integration services. This April Pervasive announced Pervasive Galaxy, a development and collaboration platform for the creation of integration services. Pervasive Galaxy combines a service marketplace with tools for chat, revenue sharing, auctioning, and crowdsourcing. Popular ESB provider MuleSoft also announced an integration marketplace for its Mule iON platform.

Users can overcome cloud data restrictions with parallel processing tools

As organizations look to store more and more data remotely with third party cloud applications, retrieving data has become a growing problem. Companies such as Salesforce.com must place limits on the amount of data a customer can request at one time to make sure that the application is available for all users. Because of that restriction, retrieving or updating large amounts of data can be time consuming and costly.

To meet this challenge, some integration providers now offer parallel processing tools. We recently spoke with Ilan Sehayek, CTO at integration software and services provider Jitterbit, about how parallel processing can improve data retrieval time. Jitterbit recently announced Jitterbit 4.0, which includes updated parallel processing tools. Read more… »

Tools resembling Facebook features can add self-documentation, accessibility control

Because of the myriad applications, programming languages and APIs in play, cloud application integration often requires the expertise of several participants. When these participants come from service providers, customer organizations, and third party specialists, collaboration becomes both more difficult and more critical to success.

Adding social networking technology to a cloud integration platform may help integration professionals work together to meet the challenges of cloud application integration. We talked to Betsy Bilhorn, Director of Product Management at Scribe Software, about using social networking technology within a cloud integration platform. Scribe is set to release Scribe Online, a cloud-based integration tool that makes of use of social collaboration technology, this spring.

“As you have these more complex hybrid environments, you’re going to need partners, various people within the customer organization, and specialists from the outside,” said Bilhorn. “We asked, ‘How do you have all those people working together on a specific integration?’”
Read more… »