Summa

Integrating with SaaS (Software as a Service) solutions is often underestimated in complexity and effort. This white paper covers key planning considerations related to data modeling, data mapping and security, as well as key capabilities needed in a SaaS integration layer.

The “Planning for SaaS Integration” white paper is now available for dowload at our website (simple registration required).

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To maximize their benefit, SaaS solutions need to integrate with existing enterprise systems. Depending on the business requirements and the integration capabilities of the chosen SaaS product, the integration approach may not be trivial. While a comprehensive API offered by SaaS is a must-have, in most cases a custom SaaS integration layer will be needed to comply with SOA principles and to facilitate integration with existing systems.

In this blog post I will provide an overview of capabilities that a typical SaaS integration layer should provide, and identify integration products that best fit those capabilities.

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On Monday at IBM’s Impact conference, they announced their acquisition of Cast Iron Systems. This is a very interesting acquisition related cloud/SaaS integration and our Focus there. We will be following this closely in the coming weeks and months. Stay tuned for more information.

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In this blog post I will provide an overview of considerations when integrating with a specific SaaS provider: Salesforce.com (SFDC). Salesforce.com is one of the most popular SaaS applications in the market and it is one the leading SFA (Sales Force Automation) solutions available to date. Salesforce.com provides very comprehensive integration capabilities. To narrow the scope of this post, I will focus on integrating through their Enterprise Web Service API. The discussion will also be focused on the technical aspects of the integration. There are several business and data modeling decisions that will not be covered here, but are covered at a high-level on an earlier post of this series.

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There are many things to consider when integrating with Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions, some of which are easily overlooked. In many aspects, integrating with SaaS is similar to integrating with packaged products, but it is often more challenging due to the intricacies of integrating with a system hosted outside your network. In this blog post, I will go over some key planning considerations to be made in terms of data modeling, mapping, security, integration strategies and data cleansing among others.  

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Your team has designed the perfect architecture for an SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) project. You are all excited and ready to get rolling. A few weeks later you find out that you will need to make several compromises in your design because of other teams’ skills and constraints. Your end of the integration is almost fully developed and ready for integration testing when you find out that the other end is still undergoing development, or worse, it is in still on early stages of design. Sound familiar? I have found these to be very common situations in SOA integration projects that span across two or more teams and/or applications. In this post I will explore five frequent SOA project pitfalls along with some recommendations that can help mitigate or avoid some of these roadblocks to make your project successful. You will find that these scenarios are not unique to SOA integration projects, but they also apply to most inter-group IT projects.

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No man (or woman) is an island - we cannot thrive alone. Similarly no application is an island. In the same way that people across the globe have become intractably interconnected by technology, so have applications and the data that they thrive on. SaaS applications can become dangerous islands of process and data if you are not careful in planning from the start. SaaS applications are increasing in rate of adoption due to both their inherent value and acceleration caused by the economic situation and capital investment posture that most companies are in. The SaaS island needs to have a bridge, ferry dock or airport to be useful. Understanding your vision and the factors outlined within this article will help you decide.

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