WDCi Blogs

Lets say that you have a database internally that holds some of your key data. You have just implemented a CRM in Salesforce and you want to be able to reference (lookup) this data in real time.

You have a couple of choices:
1) Copy all the data into Salesforce and keep the two systems synchronised. This is ok, and if you need the data frequently may be the best way to go

2) Keep the data in the database, and just look it up from there.

For option 2, this used to involve a fair bit of setup and a bit of custom coding to get it to all work nicely, and more importantly to work securely. A couple of recent features to two products has just made this easier.

Firstly, Salesforce.com has introduced a new feature to allow you to generate your own certificate to securely call a web Service inside your company firewall and be sure that the originator of the request was in fact your own Salesforce instance. See the following write-up for more info.. http://wiki.developerforce.com/index.php/Making_Authenticated_Web_Service_Callouts_Using_Two-Way_SSL

Secondly, Boomi has released a feature to expose a database query, or Stored procedure as a web Service that can be called in real time. This release from Boomi has opened up a whole range of possibilities to quickly and securely expose internal services to SaaS based applications.

For more information on this or other integration stories give us a call at WDCi..

Our objective is to simplify integration as much as possible, resulting in lower costs to implement and maintain. Lowering the cost and speeding up the time to market will enable companies of any size to utilise integration technology and eliminate manual intervention and data processing. Let’s face it you don’t have to be a big company to want to save time and money. Apart from using a mature tool such as Boomi Atomsphere, we work with you to define what’s important for a successful integration. Our process takes into account the following:

• What are we trying to achieve: the deadlines, the business drivers
• Connectivity requirements: the applications involved, the processes that need to be integrated
• Data formats: the best way to extract and synchronise your data, data examples
• Data volumes: what data volumes are involved and what is the frequency of updates
• What the integration process looks like: what does it need to do to connect, transform, synchronise and update your data
• How will the process run: when does the integration happen, ie hourly, daily, weekly etc, what happens if an error occurs
• Managing change: how are modifications and minor changes to the integration handled

We’ve put an outline of this process onto our website to help you kick-start your integration.  A bit of preparation will help you understand the process involved and will minimise the cost and frustrations in building out an integration solution.  If you like the idea, have a question or suggestion, email us @ rio@wdcigroup.net and let us know.

I’ve read a lot of blogs/articles about integration being a significant barrier to SaaS adoption in the enterprise. Sure integration can be a challenge, but in my opinion it’s not as scary as some of the articles imply.

Using a tool like Boomi, implemented as part of a solution like RIO makes use of the excellent APIs that many of the SaaS vendors have put in place. Boomi offers a true integration solution, has more than 40+ connectors/adapters and enables you to integrate to just about anything. Admittedly some of the SaaS vendors (and many of the on-premise vendors) present some challenges to integration, but there’s always a way to extract and insert your data.

I’m not downplaying the fact that integration can be a challenge, I’m just suggesting that it’s possible and there are tools out there to do it and to do it fast.  Before we partnered with Boomi we looked at 20+ tools for SaaS integration and whilst Boomi was ahead of the pack, many of the tools were decent and have come a long way in the past 12 months.

I’ve posted some reasons why we think that RIO is hot, you may want to check it out.  From our perspective, integration from SaaS to SaaS and SaaS to on-premise applications is achievable within days, with a solution that allows for ongoing monitoring and maintenance at a low-cost.