1. CONNECT ONCE, INTEGRATE EVERYWHERE
CONNECT ONCE, INTEGRATE EVERYWHERE
INTEGRATION STRATEGIES FOR ISVS:
PART I
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction 1
INTRODUCTION Why Integration has become a Barrier 1
Most, if not all, analysts covering the SaaS industry today would agree that integra- Changing Consumer Attitudes 2
Why Integration is Critical to Your Success 2
tion has become a major, if not the number one, barrier to SaaS adoption. The pro-
Getting Started with
liferation of SaaS applications, an intensifying competitive landscape, and changes 3
Integration – Building Your API
in consumer attitudes and buying patterns all contribute to the rising importance of API’s are Only Part of the Solution… 3
integration and have propelled it to the top of the strategic agenda for ISV’s. Avoid Temptation to “Hard Code” 4
Conclusion 5
Whether you are a new to the SaaS arena or perhaps rethinking your current inte-
gration strategy, this two-part series of whitepapers will help you to understand the
shifting landscape of SaaS integration, identify what your options are to address
the integration imperative and select the integration strategy most appropriate for
your business
WHY INTEGRATION HAS BECOME A BARRIER
So why has integration become a barrier to SaaS adoption? The problem lies not in
SaaS technology itself but in the attempt to use conventional integration products
for SaaS integration. It’s a technology mismatch. Conventional integration products
were built for traditional on premise software implementations – not SaaS.
The fundamental limitation of conventional integration products (whether hosted
on premise or “in the cloud”) is that they are single-tenant. As such, each customer
must buy, install and maintain its own copy of the product and must do so at every
location where integration is to occur. As a result, using conventional integration
products to integrate SaaS applications greatly increases cost, complexity and time
to deploy while also greatly limiting scalability.
The result is that the overall value proposition of your SaaS application is greatly
diminished when viewed in the context of time to value, implementation costs and
total cost of ownership. To date, ISVs have had little choice but to pass the cost and Boomi Corporate Headquarters
complexity on to the end customer. The underlying premise of this model has been Address: 801 Cassatt Road, Suite 120,
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that integration is the customer’s problem to solve.
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2. CONNECT ONCE, INTEGRATE EVERYWHERE
CHANGING CONSUMER ATTITUDES
Understandably, this mismatch of value delivery has not gone unnoticed by SaaS
consumers. Whereas SaaS consumers were once willing to shoulder the burden
of integration and agreed to incur significant upfront costs to engage professional
services or traditional system integrators, that is no longer the case. SaaS ISVs have
reported that integration comes up in the vast majority of, if not all, sales calls and
prospects are demanding answers to integration questions early in the sales cycle.
Increasingly, consumers of SaaS are looking to SaaS ISVs to include integration as
part of their offering. SaaS consumers don’t understand why they can buy an ap-
plication as a service but not the associated integration. They want a complete and
integrated solution that works “out of the box,” can be deployed rapidly, and begins
delivering value immediately.
Also gone are the days when consumers were willing to let integration be a “phase
II” project without understanding how integration will be accomplished. They want
to see it work as part of the sales and product demonstration process. You must be
prepared to address your prospect’s questions or risk losing the sales opportunity to
a competitor who can.
WHY INTEGRATION IS CRITICAL TO YOUR SUCCESS
Integration has certainly always played a key, if not somewhat painful, role in
information technology so why has it become more critical with the advent of
SaaS technology?
REASON #1 – SaaS is very modular. Because SaaS employs a highly services
oriented architecture it fosters a very modularized approach to application develop-
ment. As a result, there has been a proliferation of specialized SaaS applications
introduced to the market that focus on solving a specific business function (e.g. sales
compensation management) but with very deep and rich functionality. By recent
estimates, there are as many as 1,500 SaaS companies now in existence.
Unlike traditional enterprise applications which tend to be monolithic “suites,” SaaS
ISVs (with a few notable exceptions) are pursuing a “point solution” application strat-
egy. However, this approach relies heavily on the ability to integrate with other spe-
cialized applications to deliver a complete and holistic solution to the end customer.
REASON #2 – hybrid application strategies. At the same time, SaaS consumers by
and large are pursuing a “best of breed” strategy for adopting and deploying SaaS
applications. The adoption of SaaS technology by an enterprise typically occurs in
stages as early adopters in the organization experiment with and eventually sub- Boomi Corporate Headquarters
scribe to an initial SaaS application such as CRM. It may take some time before all Address: 801 Cassatt Road, Suite 120,
Berwyn, PA 19312
applications in the enterprise have been converted to SaaS and some organizations
Tel: (800) 732-3602
may choose to continue to run applications on premise indefinitely. For the foresee- Email: info@boomi.com
able future, it is safe to assume that the vast majority of your target customers will be
West Coast Office
operating in a hybrid SaaS / on premise model.
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3. CONNECT ONCE, INTEGRATE EVERYWHERE
REASON #3 – “stickiness.” Implementing a well-conceived integration strategy cre- “Our customers are fo-
ates “stickiness” for your application. Integrated applications are less likely to be
replaced than stand alone applications. While “pay-as-you-go” and avoiding vendor cused on solving their
“lock in” are part of the “SaaS ethos,” you can improve your potential for long-term subscription billing needs
retention by being fully integrated into your customer’s business workflows.
All of this means that your application must be able to “play nicely” not only with and don’t want to be
other SaaS applications but with a range of on premise applications as well. A re- bothered with complex
cent survey by Saugatuck Technologies underscores this point. Survey respondents
ranked the ability to integrate SaaS and on-premise workflows as the number one integration issues. We
business consideration when selecting a SaaS provider. needed an end-to-end,
on demand solution to
GETTING STARTED WITH keep up with our Z-Billing
INTEGRATION – BUILDING YOUR API and Z-Payments appli-
The first step in getting started with integration is to build an application program- cations. Connecting to
ming interface (API) for your application. APIs are the basic building block for any
integration strategy. Be sure to begin thinking about and designing your API as you AtomSphere solves these
build your application. Too many ISVs leave this work until after the application is integration challenges
built and in production. In addition, best practice is to approach your API like any
other module of your application – led by product management and not just a techni- and gives Zuora a major
cal project for the development team. advantage over competi-
APIs currently available in the SaaS market today vary greatly in maturity and tors using legacy integra-
capability. If this is your first attempt at building an API it’s advisable to engage tion methods”
consulting resources during the design phase to help address issues like security,
web-services granularity, metering and throttling. Think of your API as a channel to Tien Tzuo,
your marketplace – not just a connection point for other developers. A well designed
CEO, Zuora
API lays the foundation for not only successful integration, but the overall adoption
and retention of your application.
API’S ARE ONLY PART OF THE SOLUTION…
There is a common misperception in the market that if two applications both have
APIs, then the integration challenge is solved. This is not the case. Well constructed
APIs are essential to SaaS integration, but they’re not the “Holy Grail” that’s been
promised. An API opens up secure access to data but it does not accomplish the
integration itself. Developers know when they call an API what result to expect, what
data gets returned, in what format etc. But it’s like an electrical outlet in a wall. Until
you plug something into it, it just sits there.
Unfortunately that’s where the analogy to electrical outlets ends. Even though there Boomi Corporate Headquarters
are web services “standards,” developers implement the standards in different ways. Address: 801 Cassatt Road, Suite 120,
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Things like authentication, session management, protocols, metadata browsing, and Tel: (800) 732-3602
exposing customizations are rarely implemented the same way from application to Email: info@boomi.com
application. Hence all the integration “outlets” look different, require different plugs
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4. CONNECT ONCE, INTEGRATE EVERYWHERE
But even if all APIs were standardized, there would still be a need for integration.
Why? APIs are only one end of the equation – they do not complete the end-to-end
integration process between applications. Two apps with APIs still need a “cord” with
“plugs” to connect them together.
For example, APIs don’t handle the transformation of data between applications
(required because every app describes data in a different format, even when multiple
apps are describing the same thing such as a Customer). They don’t handle the vali-
dation, business logic and error processing of the data as it moves between apps.
And they don’t handle the interaction with the API of another application that’s being
integrated. Even two apps built on the same platform-as-a-service (PaaS) are not
natively integrated with one another. That probably bears repeating…Even two apps
built on the same PaaS are not natively integrated with one another.
AVOID TEMPTATION TO “HARD CODE”
Early attempts by ISVs to address integration requirements have included hard cod-
ing their application with other “strategic” SaaS applications. This approach seems
seductively simple but fraught with pitfalls. On the surface it would seem that you
can get something coded “quickly” and begin advertising that you are “pre-integrat-
ed” with other key applications.
The major flaw in this approach is that in the vast majority of cases, your customers
will have customized their tenant of one or more of the applications in question. You
would need to code a separate instance of the integration process for every combi-
nation of customized tenants – raising maintenance costs exponentially. And hard
coding in general leads to maintenance issues as APIs and schemas (file and record
formats) change regularly. Integration processes become brittle and will invariably
break. The alternative of limiting the integration to a standard “vanilla” process will
result in a loss of competitiveness. Customers always want their customizations
reflected in their integrations.
Still, some ISVs have elected to build basic integration utilities such as salesforce.
com’s Apex Data Loader and Taleo Connect. These utilities handle importing and
exporting of flat files and databases to and from the ISVs application.
Building integration infrastructure for SaaS is not an effort to take lightly. ISVs tend to
underestimate the overall effort and costs of building and maintaining an integration
solution. A complete integration solution goes well beyond the integration process
itself, and must include functionality to handle connectivity, security, monitoring,
redundancy and resiliency etc. There is considerable effort involved with learning
Boomi Corporate Headquarters
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Address: 801 Cassatt Road, Suite 120,
release cycles of SaaS applications and changes to those APIs. Berwyn, PA 19312
Tel: (800) 732-3602
Unless integration is a core competency within the organization, building integra- Email: info@boomi.com
tion infrastructure is not recommended. Development resources are best utilized West Coast Office
for mission-related projects and building competitive advantage in your application. Address: 473 Jackson St., 3 rd Floor
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ISVs are generally finding they prefer not to become integration experts.
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5. CONNECT ONCE, INTEGRATE EVERYWHERE
CONCLUSION
Consumers of SaaS are driving ISV’s to provide “out of the box” integration to the
applications they purchase as they realize the value of having a fully integrated
business. Though many ISV’s have attempted to solve the integration challenge
with API’s or hard-coding to strategic applications, neither solution has proven to be
scalable. Most consumers are no longer willing to bear the burden of the extensive
IT and development resources required to manage and maintain the frequent API
updates of every SaaS application in the organization. Part II of this whitepaper will
explore the integration solutions that have proven successful for ISVs.
Boomi Corporate Headquarters
Address: 801 Cassatt Road, Suite 120,
Berwyn, PA 19312
Tel: (800) 732-3602
Boomi is the market-leading provider of on-demand integration technology and the creator of Email: info@boomi.com
AtomSphere, the industry’s first integration platform-as-a-service. AtomSphere connects providers
and consumers of SaaS and on-premise applications via a pure SaaS integration platform that West Coast Office
does not require software or appliances. ISVs and businesses alike benefit by connecting to the
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industry’s largest network of SaaS, PaaS, on-premise and cloud computing environments in
San Francisco, CA 94111
a seamless and fully self-service model. Leading SaaS players rely on AtomSphere to accelerate
time to market, increase sales, and eliminate the headaches associated with integration. Tel: (800) 732-3602
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For more information about Boomi, visit www.boomi.com.