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DATA INTEGRATION PLATFORM
Cloud integration is a system of tools and technologies that connects various applications, systems, repositories, and IT environments for the real-time exchange of data and processes. Once combined, the data and integrated cloud services can then be accessed by multiple devices over a network or via the internet.
The birth of cloud integration was a game changer. It revolutionized the way businesses approach integration and the age-old battle against data silos. Offering flexibility and scalability, cloud integration opened a world of new opportunities for organizations to connect disparate systems. Businesses have benefited greatly from the ability to combine all of their cloud applications as well as on-premises systems. This practice gives companies comprehensive access and visibility into their data as well as improved functional connectivity.
THE PURPOSE OF CLOUD INTEGRATION
Cloud integration was created to break down data silos, improve connectivity and visibility, and ultimately optimize business processes. It is a response to the need to share data among cloud-based applications and to unify information components.
Cloud integration has grown in popularity as the use of Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions continues to increase. IDC predicts this growth will continue and that nearly one third of the worldwide enterprise application market will be SaaS-based by 2018.
Additionally, more businesses are operating with a hybrid mix of SaaS and on-premises applications, creating a greater need for progressive integration methods.
Cloud integration offers the following advantages over older, compartmentalized organizational methods:
Each user can access personal data in real time from any device.
Each user can access personal data from any location with Internet access.
Each user can integrate personal data such as calendars and contact lists served by diverse application programs.
Each user can employ the same logon information (username and password) for all personal applications.
The system efficiently passes control messages among application programs.
By avoiding the use of data silos, data integrity is maintained and data conflicts (which can arise from redundancy) are avoided.
Cloud integration offers scalability to allow for future expansion in terms of the number of users, the number of applications, or both.
In recent years, cloud integration has gained favor among organizations, corporations, and government agencies that implement SaaS (Software as a Service), a software distribution model in which applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and made available to users over the Internet.
Cloud Data Integration delivers accessible, trusted, and secure data to facilitate more valuable business decisions, identify competitive advantages to better service customers, and build an empowered workforce.
Cloud Data Integration can help you with your global, distributed data warehouse and analytics projects. If you are using a cloud data warehouse like AWS Redshift, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, or Snowflake, you can use Cloud Data Integration solutions to help augment the performance, productivity, and extensive connectivity to cloud and on-premises sources. With flexible and scalable transformations and advanced capabilities, you can seamlessly integrate growing data volumes across disparate sources to your data warehouse with easy-to-use wizards, preconfigured templates, and out-of-the-box mappings.
Deliver integrated, relevant data
To ensure your insights are based on accurate, cleansed, and timely data, it is critical to easily connect disparate sources without limitations on the data type and format or the need to hand code. Cloud Data Integration provides preconfigured mappings and transformations such as partitioning, lookups and cache, push-down optimization, easy-to-use wizards, and designers to help all types of users quickly build easy to advanced integrations.
Integrate asset management
As data complexity and the scope of integration work grows, asset management becomes a challenge for customers. Projects and folders in the Explore user interface help address this challenge and let you organize integration assets using a taxonomy appropriate for your business needs, applying proper security controls. Administrators can now manage project and folder structures and grant access to users through role-based security. Administrators also have flexibility to set fine-grained access control at the individual project, folder, or asset level on top of role-based security.
Support high-volume workloads
The file mass ingestion capability lets you transfer enterprise data assets in a flat file format from on-premises to Amazon S3 data stores and Amazon Redshift data warehouses in the cloud using FTP, SFTP, and FTPS standard protocols. Developers can easily author mass ingestion tasks with wizards and monitor task executions both at job and file granularity using the same Monitor service used for other data integration jobs. File mass ingestion is designed to handle thousands of files a day in a single process. Based on patented technology, Change Data Capture delivers altered data in real time to multiple targets, processing faster data transformations, synchronizations, and replications across enterprise database systems.
Companies who use cloud integration have synchronized data and applications, improving their ability to operate effectively and nimbly.
Other benefits include:
- Improved operational efficiency
- Increased flexibility and scalability
- Faster time-to-market
- Better internal communication
- Improved customer service, support, and retention
- Increased competitive edge
- Reduced operational costs and increased revenue
CLOUD INTEGRATION TYPES AND METHODS
Integration in the cloud can involve creating cloud-to-cloud integration, cloud-to-on-premises integration, or a combination of both. Integrations can address different business components, including data and applications.
Data integration
The synchronization of data between repositories. Data can be processed, transported and/or transformed during data integration. This is a strictly data-related connection.
Application integration
Connects various applications and arranges continued functionality and interoperability. This is more than data sharing. It involves issuing requests and commands to trigger business events or processes.
Businesses have the option of building their own integration solutions or using a third-party provider to create cloud integrations. However, as the number of applications increases and cloud integrations grow more complex, it becomes far less scalable to build specialized in-house integrations that must be recreated for each project. Using a cloud integration platform, such as an integration platform as a service (iPaaS), empowers organizations to perform both application and data integration using an agile, scalable, reusable solution.
