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Cloud Applications (IaaS)

 

Historically, the advantages of system integration and business processes automation tools have only been available to large companies facing the challenge of dealing with siloed business applications. Smaller firms wishing to automate costly and error-prone manual procedures in order to become more responsive to changing business needs generally had few alternatives. Due to the high cost of integration software and consulting resources required to implement an enterprise grade solution, companies would either develop ad-hoc solutions using custom code, or invest in skilled developer resources that could leverage open source to build more durable integration systems.

The advent of the Software as a Service (SaaS) application model has made it possible for businesses of all size to gain access to enterprise-grade applications at affordable pricing. Rapid adoption of this on-demand, pay-as-you-go approach is changing the economics of application ownership. 

Analyst at Forrester Research, “The successful adoption of SaaS solutions will transform
usage from purpose built point solutions to integration into mission critical processes.”
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Although SaaS applications offer great value in terms of features and capabilities relative to cost, they pose critical challenges to integration. Predominantly, current SaaS solutions are hosted applications that target a specific industry or line of business such as CRM, ERP, Accounting or Sales Performance Management. To a system integrator moving such applications to the cloud simply exacerbates the siloed application problem and increases cost.

As a result, companies that have embraced the SaaS model are at a serious disadvantage in terms of maintaining accurate, high-quality data and automating key business processes because of inability to integrate or synchronize data between multiple lines of business. 

Software as a Service may change the economics of application ownership, but it does not address interoperability between business applications hosted in the cloud or elsewhere. As the model continues to evolve integration is quickly becoming the sleeper issue with traditional integration tools often being too cumbersome or cost prohibitive. An effective solution must take an altogether different approach to the integration problem.

Integration as a Service

As organizations adopt a SaaS model and cloud-based application platforms become more prevalent, the need for interoperability and data exchange between service application platforms increases. Integration as a Service (IaaS) is a natural convergence of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and SaaS. Providing integration as a service can address the need for SaaS integration using the same on-demand model, allowing developers to create targeted cloud-to-cloud business process automation solutions and giving SaaS platform providers the much needed ability to synchronize and integrate their applications.  

IaaS can provide a cost-effective, scalable, and flexible solution, allowing businesses to minimize the use of internal IT resources. Application integration tools can be made available using the self-service model, and can be configured, deployed and managed from a web browser or similar interface without having to install software or hardware on-premises. Companies with multiple organizations may take advantage of a multi-tenant approach to isolate business units without sacrificing the ability to govern and control the system. 

The Service Application Engine™ allows developers to solve a broad range of integration problems and may be deployed as a cloud solution, providing integration as a service. Our technology allows organizations that have adopted the SaaS model to transform their applications from point solutions into integrated, mission critical processes.

Key Platform Features

  • The fabric's collaborative development environment allows developer teams to create and share service, interface and data format definitions via Web Browser, FTP and Social Networking tools.
  • Supports web-based access, management and deployment of configuration artifacts, processes and application fabric components.
  • Multi-tenant architecture allows application engines to be organized into domains providing shared governance and control of integration resources without compromising system security.
  • Centralized update of runtime, client and component libraries eliminates the need for downloading of patches or upgrades.
  • Provides service API authoring facilities with support for XML and JSON data exchange formats, allowing developers to extend the reach of the integration platform.
  • HTTP protocol support allows developers to access service logic and data collections using the REST API methods GET, POST, PUT or DELETE without additional coding
  • Data Space technology provides data persistence and in-memory caching, improving performance and eliminating the need for additional database software.
  • The fabric's abstract syntax processor allows developers to define text based API commands and domain specific language syntax.
  • Supports User Registration, Roles and Organizations allowing administrators to manage user access and contact information for self-service application integration.
  • Realm-based HTTP authentication and security allows administrators to lock down access to business processes and service components.
  • Integrated security allows developers to lock down services and processes across the fabric and validate against external security mechanisms such as LDAP.