Ponemon Institute surveyed 870 IT professionals and found 23 per cent of respondents admit that their data is often left unsecured and inadequately protected.
The problem usually lies in the way unstructured data is spread across the organization’s knowledge management systems, corporate applications (CRM/ERP systems), databases, files etc. and the lack of a clear vision of how it should be consolidated. Recent Gartner Group research supports this with the figures of as much as 80 percent of actual or potentially mission-critical enterprise information taking the form of unstructured or semi-structured data.
Integration, migration, synchronization, data cleansing… it’s all already out there, why not make use of it?
Apatar has recently launched Apatar On-Demand for Salesforce.com CRM and QuickBooks accounting software. Apatar On-Demand Edition is a hosted service that synchronizes order data between Salesforce.com CRM and desktop QuickBooks accounting software. It was designed for business users, so the process of setting up the integration link does not require technical skills. Apatar On-Demand Edition for Salesforce.com and QuickBooks allows running one- or two-way, recurring or one-time synchronization of account, contact, order, and opportunity data, while preserving links between tables in both Salesforce.com and QuickBooks.Designed specifically to avoid double entry, subscription to Apatar software also includes embedded data quality service. To free its users from manual data upkeep, Apatar software searches and removes duplicate accounts every time it synchronizes order data.
Apatar On-Demand is available on AppExchange
Why Salesforce.com and QuickBooks users should care?
According to Forrester Research, 66% of North American and European enterprises are afraid to adopt SaaS applications due to integration issues. Apatar On-Demand solves this problem by providing easy-to-use integration and synchronization of data between Web-based and desktop applications. A recent survey by Kelton Research confirms the enterprise’s increasing interest in on-demand services, with nearly 73 percent of large companies saying they had adopted or plan to adopt SaaS in the next 18 months.
Features and benefits: * Accelerate billing
* Shorten collection cycles
* Eliminate duplicate order data
* Avoid double entry and manual coding
* Quickly process new and existing customer sales orders
* Arm your sales and customer service representatives with key information, including customer sales history and up-to-date product data
* As easy as synchronizing your BlackBerry!
Supported QuickBooks editions include QuickBooks Pro, Premier, Enterprise 2003, and, later, QuickBooks 2007.
More details here.
Salesforce.com’s latest announcement of its “global strategic alliance” with Google…what does that mean for the world?
In “global” terms, aside from integration between Salesforce.com’s cloud-based development platform with data from Google services, it’s a quest to outlive on-premises software and replace it with web-based applications. A perspective that doesn’t look too promising for Microsoft and the smaller on-premises software vendors.
Behold and despair, the era of SaaS is starting right here right now. =)
A database, the core of your enterprise data management. How do you know which one you need? With the choice of applications on the market today, selecting the database that fits your needs can be quite a challenge. So let’s see, here’s a few things that could make your list of priorities when selecting which database to use:
* Budget (obviously, first make up your mind on how much you wanna spend)
*Size and scalability
*Speed and optimization capacities
*Performance and reliability
*Security (access rights)
*Integration possibilities
If totally lost, you could check out Oracle Database 11g and IBM DB2 for starters.
Quocirca has recently published a white paper on SaaS adoption across the business sector.
SaaS already is a huge part of most business processes, however, there are still companies that rely hevily on their on-premises applications.
…many vendors are realising that to provide a satisfactory end user experience, total reliance on a web browser is not always enough and a desktop component is often needed.
Quocirca lists the following problems with SaaS adoption:
- Most consumer and business applications have an on-demand component
- For many applications an on-premise component is needed to enrich the user experience
- On-demand delivery is attractive to businesses because it helps them manage costs, provides high availability and flexible access
- Business processes are only as strong as the weakest link in the applications that support them
- Some level of integration of on-demand services with legacy applications and internal workflow will always be necessary
- Many new independent software vendors (ISVs) are building in on-demand components from the start
- Existing ISVs are making the move to on-demand too, but they face additional challenges
This only means that there’s a growing need for an effective link between the desktop and web applications and platforms. And since data integration market closely follows the SaaS trend, it looks like integration will be catering for this linkage and transition from the on-premises to the on-demand.
Integration… what do you do when it needs to be done, yet you realize you don’t have the money, the time or the assets to invest into it?
Below are a few ways out. Each is widely used, so the selection depends largely on your company’s priorities and the nature of business. before I start, let’s make it clear that leaving the problem untackled or allowing your own customer to deal with it is not an option.
First, and probably the least effort-consuming is turning to professional services. This implies having a SaaS vendor come in and do the integration for you and provide you with the most recent on-demand integration tricks. A good option, as long as you’re not scared to spend money.
Second, you could build your own professional services team to cater for your company’s data integration needs or even build your own integration solution. But this too is an approach reserved for larger companies that can afford to allot staff members and time for this purpose.
Third, an approach for risky spirits and real players, find a partner that specializes in your area of aintegration. Trust me, you won’t ahve a problem finding one. The problem that might arise is, again, time and compatibility of your business with the data integration ambitions of your partner ISV. But there’s always a way out, right?
What’s right for your company?
I just came across a superb article that chews data integration out for you the best possible way! For business users that do not write code, it contains a comprehensive description of data integration approaches to keep in mind when selecting an integration provider to work with. I personaly consider manual integration, where you need to do all the work and write code quite limited as compared to “application approach”, where a ready application will do everything for you.
“The applications, which are specialized computer programs, would locate, retrieve and integrate the information for you. During the integration process, the applications must manipulate the data so that the information from one source is compatible with the information from the other source.”
“Most data integration system designers assume that the end goal is to create as little work for the end user as possible, so they tend to focus on applications and data warehousing techniques.” That’s the idea: the easier for the end user (I particularly mean corporate users that cannot afford to lose time on integrating their customer lists and data manually), the better!
News from SugarCRM! The company introduced Sugar Data Center Edition (DCE) – a new product line for SugarCRM partners and enterprise customers, a set of provisioning and monitoring tools enabling service providers and large organizations to deploy and manage multiple instances – distinct versions of SugarCRM – from a centralized management console. Sugar DCE will be delivered in two versions – one for partners and one for customers. Sugar DCE for Partners allows SugarCRM resellers and hosting providers to deliver SugarCRM in a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model to their customer base. Sugar DCE for Enterprises allows large companies to manage multiple versions of SugarCRM within their company from a single location.
Is SugarCRM already deployed in your company? Do you keep important customer information in a database or legacy CRM and want to migrate that data to your new SugarCRM account? Ever thought of integrating it, or your SalesForce.com customer list with that in your SugarCRM? Working with SugarCRM on a corporate level becomes more and more attractive.
Savio Rodrigues has posted a brief review of Apatar in his InfoWorld Open Source weblog.
The really cool thing is that Apatar provides a visual designer and mapping tool in order to hide the complexity of ETL and data integration from the typical (business) user.
Yep, that’s the idea. Apatar was primarily created and designed as a business user-oriented tool. On top of visualization that Apatar provides, most of the things the user has to do manually is drag-and-drop icons to the visual integrator. That is, no coding whatsoever. And yet another of Apatar’s corporate user-oriented features is the connectivity itself. Apatar provides connectivity to corporate aplications like SalesForce, SugarCRM, GoldMine, etc. and can be used by pretty much any business user not familiat with development at all.
This article by David Linthicum suggests that people seem to be confusing integration with SOA these days. The thing is, integration came first and later on, when SOA came to take its place, a lot of vendors simply started calling their integration tools SOA. David notes, “integration, on its own, is not architecture. Thus, just binding systems together is not architecture, thus not SOA.”
However, if SOA is new and, you can’t argue, the idea behind both of these contepts is fairly similar (instead of building new and duplicating old applications and data, the technology should connect the existing vital parts and build up on them)… doesn’t it sound like it’s just another case of a fresh PR for an old, but improved technology?