I spent quite a long time thinking about the concept of Enterprise Integration, why it is needed and how important it is?
Enterprises need integration solution because the applications stacks are added, particularly with its own repository of data, organizations are having difficulty to centralize repositories of transaction data and ensure all the business applications remained on a common platform.
Enterprises need integration solution because they want to bring together the best enterprise applications to meet the demands that enable organizations to manage business with high performance and helps organizations build a robust and flexible architecture on which new applications, processes and strategies could be developed.
So as long as the data volumes and the numbers of applications continue to grow, organizations are forced to deal with the issue of managing and integrating data by vicious business pressures. It all makes sense with the traditional model of owning software.
But what if with the introduction of SaaS, the integration of systems includes systems that are, both, inside and outside of enterprise’s borders, those on the outside being owned and managed by 3rd party SaaS providers?
Ah... as title means: SaaS are new Silos! So integration problems still exist and even more demanding!
No, that is not what I meant after I read the comments from a SaaS practitioner, the CEO of TraverseIT.
The old model of SaaS (if you can believe SaaS is already “old” to some people) is that each SaaS provider provides you with a “single” tool to solve a single problem (i.e. One vendor provides you with CRM, another provides you with Project Management, another provides you with XYZ, etc.). The new model, which is what companies like our own are doing, is to provide you access to a “platform” of tools and technologies that are already integrated.
Oh...It seems SaaS providers are not new Silos. Quite opposite, they are the competitors for the traditional integration vendors.
BTW, I like his thought about Integration:
There are two broad forms of integration to worry about…
The first is “Data Integration”, which is at the lower levels, such as what you would achieve with Extract, Transformation & Load tools (ETL) or transformation scripts. This is about answering the question: “How do I share data between systems?”
The second form of integration to worry about is “Reporting & Business Intelligence”, which is at the higher levels. This is about answering the question: “How do I share data between systems and people?”