Cloud Integration Build vs Buy

8/13/2019 Cloud Integration Build vs Buy

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Cloud Integration Made Easy.

Cloud

Integration:

Build or Buy?

IntroductionMore and more companies have decided to take the plunge and purchase

cloud-based or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) technology. More often than

not, the decision to acquire a cloud solution is made with an eye towards

cost-savings, ease-of-use, and IT independence.

Integration, the top concern for most executives adopting a SaaS solution,

usually ends up being a bridge crossed only after the cloud solutions have

been adopted.

For many organizations, this can be a bridge too far.

Integration can seem simple enough on paper. Cloud vendors provide the

APIs and offer case studies all over their website that mention all the

other systems their application can potentially hook into. All that remains

is for you, the customer, to decide if you want to build or buy the

integration.

Building the integration in-house is often the first choice. You’ve got a

bright and talented IT team (and they’ve got more than enough time on

their hands now that you’ve adopted a cloud solution, right?). You figure

that they can knock out some code in no time, spend a week testing it,

and then it’s nothing but blue skies from there on.

Unfortunately, the additional complexities of cloud integration can soon

rain on your ROI parade.

Forward-thinking organizations do not approach their integration projects

from a one-and-done perspective. They see that the big picture includes

all of their systems and applications, both on-premise and in the cloud.

Every application must be seamlessly connected to successfully deliver

within the overall business strategy.



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Custom Coding ChallengesIf you’re considering building your own custom integrations for your new

SaaS application consider that you’ll need a robust solution that includes:

A well defined integration process. Moving data between any system,

cloud or on-premise, is not simply a case of moving data from one

database to another. Data structures differ. Rules for synchronizing

various data sets will vary.

Beyond that you need to consider business logic. Coding transformations

and data conversions is only one aspect of your integration. More often

than not there will be business processes to consider – processes that

change just as often, if not more, than the APIs for your systems. Hard-

coding business logic into your integration takes many iterations and even

more testing. When these processes inevitably change it becomes

increasingly cumbersome to manage the project.

The ability to work with rapidly changing APIs. Every system has its own

API, its own rules, and its own nuances. You need to understand the API

not only of your cloud solution, but every application you plan to connect

to it. When you choose to custom code your integration, you’re relying

on your developers to learn multiple API standards and how they function

with other technologies. Many APIs have their own programming

languages, and even the ones based on standards such as

SOAP/REST/WSDL will always have unique capabilities, schemas,

authentication requirements and transaction rules.

One of the benefits of a multi-tenant SaaS architecture is that new

versions of the application can be deployed to all customers quickly and

uniformly. As a result, APIs also change rapidly to keep up with new

functionality and other structural changes to the platform. Most SaaS

vendors will update their APIs at least four times a year. For custom code

this usually means a broken integration every time your SaaS vendor

upgrades.

Changes to the API aren’t limited to the vendor. Most modern SaaS

applications allow you to customize your experience by adding custom

fields and objects to your instance. These changes are immediately

reflected in the API. These fields will need to be added to your custom

code in order to be integrated with other systems. Normally, it will be

your application administrator adding these fields. With custom code,

every little change means that



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your administrator will need to pull your developers away from their

current projects to make sure the integration is set up correctly.

…and these pitfalls exist for each application you’re connecting!

Start linking multiple SaaS apps, each with their own upgrade schedules,

custom fields, and other nuances and it becomes a full-time IT job just to

keep your integration up and running.

Redundancy and Monitoring tools. Errors happen. Systems become

temporarily unavailable. What happens when the integrated applications

don’t respond as they should? How do you find out what went wrong and

why?

A robust integration requires a reporting mechanism for logging and

managing information about your processes. The program also needs to

proactively alert the appropriate people when something does go wrong.

These tools are essential for pinpointing exactly where a failure has

occurred. Since most integrations are comprised of numerous stages (e.g.

connections, transformations, workflow), only detailed logs will help users

accurately determine where a fault has occurred and the best ways to fix

it.

Performance and Process Optimization. SaaS applications present a

unique challenge when it comes to integration because the Web Service

calls carry with them a bevy of nuances. First, there are security

considerations to take into account. Every call to the application is

transmitted over a secure internet connection (e.g. HTTPS). Some APIs

require separate authentication calls before they allow other data to be

transmitted.

The multi-tenant nature of SaaS applications often means that there are

limitations on the number of times you can make a call to the application

in a given time period. Other APIs limit the amount of data you can move

in one call. Compounding the complexity of connecting to these APIs is

the fact they their specifications change often. If you aren’t coding around

these limitations you will significantly hamper your integration andperformance losses could be exponential. Hardcoding against a WSDL all

but guarantees little scalability and a lot of re-coding in your future.



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Benefits of an Integration PlatformStrategic companies focus on buying an integration platform that doesn’t

require IT resources and is architected to scale quickly as the company

and infrastructure grow. Modern integration platforms address cloud

integration hurdles with:

An interface designed for the business analyst. One of the biggest draws

of the cloud is the ability to give business analysts and non-technical users

administrative power of the application, while eliminating dependence on

IT to manage the underlying infrastructure.

These benefits are magnified with an integration platform that eliminates

dependence on IT and developers and allows business analysts to easily

modify integrations between on-premise and cloud systems.

Connections to systems are created using forms, business logic and

workflows are defined graphically, and data mapping and transformations

are completing without coding.

Business processes change, and it is the business analyst who best

understands them. By allowing the person in this role to implement

process changes within the integration tool you can significantly increase

the ROI of your initial cloud investment.

Loosely-coupled Web Services. A modern integration platform offers

connectivity to any API without the need for hardcoded adapters. It will

give you the ability to pull in any API, introspect the WSDL, andimmediately display the structure of the data to the end user. This

functionality is critical to ensuring that your integrations will keep working

even when the SaaS vendor updates their API or you make customizations

to your SaaS instance.

The right integration platform will support every type of Web Service API

and protocol, including HTTP, SOAP, and REST. HTTP and SOAP have been

the predominant methods for exposing Web Services APIs but many SaaS

vendors are introducing, and in some cases replacing these methods

with REST. A loosely-coupled platform will abstract the complexity of

these APIs and allow you to focus on what data to synchronize instead of

spending time trying to learn the intricacies of the transport method.

Redundancy and Performance Optimization. Network connections, and

by extension web-based APIs, are never going to be 100% reliable. There

will be times when calls time-out or connectivity goes down. Your

integration



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platform can provide tools to deal with these inconsistencies. This

includes processes for guaranteeing message delivery, failure

notifications, and other error handling schemes. These tools should be

customizable and easily managed by a non-technical user.

To accommodate the finicky nature and limitations of most Web Servicecalls, a modern integration platform offers various data chunking, parallel

processing, and data streaming technologies. These features allow you to

break your data into pieces that the Web Service can handle, allowing you

to process more data, faster – without running up against the built-in

limits of the API. Because every SaaS application has its own nuances,

these features should also be customizable, including the ability to define

data chunk sizes, number of calls per minute, etc. Again, with these

features built-in you are free to focus on process and execution instead of

research and development.

Administration Console & Testing Tools. Even the best laid plans of mice

and men… One of the biggest advantages that integration software has

over custom code is the ability to log, track, and manage your integration

when things go awry. Robust integration solutions include mechanisms

for logging and reporting when and where your data did – or did not – end

up. Proactive alerts can instantly alert the administrator that an

operation has run into an issue. Built-in administration consoles allow

users to drill down and pinpoint exactly where the failure occurred.

Another advantage of a powerful integration tool is the ability to fix things

before they go wrong. Testing tools can be used to load sample data, run

operations in “test” mode without actually modifying data, and

automatically highlight issues such as malformed queries or data formats.

Additionally, it is important that your integration platform can be

deployed as both a staging and production environment. In doing so you

can make sure that your project is configured correctly without altering

any mission critical production data. Once validated, a seamless

transition to the production system will eliminate additional testing and

dependence on IT resources.

Not all integration platforms are made equal, so it is essential to do your

homework when selecting an integration vendor. Your integration

platform should include all of the features addressed above.



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ConclusionMany companies look at the upfront costs of a purpose-built integration

platform, and believing that integration is simply a case of moving data

from Point A to Point B, think they can accomplish this process in-house

with less money and more control. In fact, for even the most simple ofintegrations, the opposite usually ends up being true. Custom code is not

a long-term solution. Over time, the lack of scalability and dependence on

programmers will balloon costs and create an unmanageable collection of

hand-coded scripts.

Moving to the cloud should not be taken lightly. It is a dramatic shift for

your company’s infrastructure and should be done within the context of

your overall business strategy. Likewise, integration of your SaaS

application, both to on-premise and other cloud systems should not be an

afterthought.

Your business should follow an integration strategy that takes into

account long-term goals while eschewing short-term fixes. Because it is

so easy to get up and running with SaaS applications, the natural tendency

is to quickly cobble together connectivity between your other systems.

However this near-sightedness will result in an ongoing drain of valuable

IT resources and can increase budgets so significantly that it removes any

chance for a return on your cloud investment.

Best-of-breed integration solutions will mirror the value delivered by the

cloud, scale to meet the rapidly changing world of SaaS, and allow you tofocus resources on business expansion and future growth.

Jitterbit is the provider of the most powerful, flexible, & easy to use

data and application integration platform. Our software allows

companies of all sizes to solve the challenge of application, data,

and business process integration with a graphical “No-Coding”

approach that accelerates and simplifies the configuration and

management of on-premise and cloud integration projects.

Learn more: www.jitterbit.com. Contact us: [email protected]

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Cloud Integration Build vs Buy