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标题: Data Integration Solutions for Salesforce [打印本页]

作者: Rex    时间: 2009-8-17 20:44     标题: Data Integration Solutions for Salesforce

Data Integration Solutions for Salesforce
作者: Rex    时间: 2009-8-17 20:48     标题: Re:Data Integration Solutions for Salesforce

Software as a service (SaaS) is faster to deploy, simpler to upgrade, and 50 to 70 percent less
expensive than on-premise equivalents, according to McKinsey Consulting.1 Yet SaaS still presents
organizations with critical challenges:
• SaaS applications such as Salesforce CRM are typically managed by line-of-business users in
sales, marketing, human resources, and customer support organizations. In many cases, these
end users are also responsible for implementing and supporting the integration solution.
作者: Rex    时间: 2009-8-17 20:51     标题: Re:Data Integration Solutions for Salesforce

SaaS applications “in the cloud” must integrate seamlessly with on-premise business data and
applications to be able to deliver operational effi ciency: providing end users with timely and
accurate information when and as needed.
• Although many SaaS projects start at a departmental level with simple integration requirements
in their initial phase of deployment, it is common for the integration complexity to grow as
end-user adoption increases and the SaaS application becomes part of a broad enterprise
architecture.
作者: Rex    时间: 2009-8-17 20:51     标题: Re:Data Integration Solutions for Salesforce

SaaS applications require specialized integration services to allow smooth, trouble-free operations
across the corporate fi rewall. Yet end users, who have only the most basic IT skills, often must be
able to use SaaS applications with minimal IT support.
This white paper describes Informatica’s portfolio approach to SaaS integration and suggests
a solution to these seemingly confl icting needs: a data integration approach that scales with
customer requirements.
作者: Rex    时间: 2009-8-17 20:58     标题: Re:Data Integration Solutions for Salesforce

The Growth of Software as a Service
An growing number of companies are adopting SaaS offerings. Research fi rm IDC predicts that in
2009, the SaaS market will grow more than 40 percent year over year. The same IDC report also
predicts that by the end of 2009, 76 percent of all U.S. companies will use at least one SaaS
application.2
作者: Rex    时间: 2009-8-17 20:59     标题: Re:Data Integration Solutions for Salesforce

As companies look for ways to contain costs on IT infrastructure in a struggling economy, three
factors make SaaS a popular alternative to on-premise applications:
• Rapid implementation. With no hardware or software to deploy and manage, SaaS minimizes
the demand on IT resources and speeds time to production.
• Pricing. Subscription-based services mean businesses pay only for the resources they use and
readily monitor their use to quantify return on investment. This makes SaaS more affordable
upfront and easily scalable.
• Flexibility. Customizing SaaS applications to adapt to customer requirements takes place
through confi guration, not coding—something end users often can handle with minimal training.
作者: Rex    时间: 2009-8-17 21:02     标题: Re:Data Integration Solutions for Salesforce

The Importance of SaaS Integration
Despite the potential benefi ts of SaaS, it can’t deliver on its promise if people can’t use it to
access all their information on demand—especially if that information is poorly synchronized
with corporate systems. In fact, Forrester Research reports that integration issues are software IT
decision makers’ top concern about SaaS and the main reason they hesitate to adopt it.3
作者: Rex    时间: 2009-8-17 21:04     标题: Re:Data Integration Solutions for Salesforce

SaaS implementations often begin at a departmental level driven by a specifi c line-of-business
need, later expanding to other departments or to an enterprise level. Because each department
stores its own business-critical data in various back-end systems, small SaaS deployments
typically have simple integration requirements that can be met with point solutions implemented
by the application administrator or a systems integrator with minimal IT support.
Larger SaaS deployments, on the other hand, have more complex integration requirements
and must fi t into a company’s enterprise integration architecture. As a result, they require close
collaboration between IT and the line of business, and must be implemented, integrated, and
managed by IT using more sophisticated technology.
作者: Rex    时间: 2009-8-17 21:53     标题: Re:Data Integration Solutions for Salesforce

Typical SaaS integration use cases include the following:
• Loading information into the SaaS system. Legacy back-end systems usually contain all the
operational and historic data needed by end users; without such data, the SaaS application is
not very useful.
• Synchronizing the SaaS system and back-end systems. Even with SaaS applications,
companies need to maintain current, accurate, real-time databases in-house to ensure secure,
reliable visibility into critical data at all times. This is especially critical with data that changes
every day, throughout the day, such as customer, sales, inventory, and product information.
• Extracting information from the SaaS system. If companies have existing compliance and
business intelligence applications, they must be able to transfer information into them from the
SaaS solution to generate the wide range of operational and strategic reports those enterprise
applications allow.
作者: Rex    时间: 2009-8-17 21:56     标题: Re:Data Integration Solutions for Salesforce

Different Approaches to SaaS integration
Most mature providers of SaaS applications such as salesforce.com furnish customers and
vendors with a Web service-based API for integration. Customers must then decide what approach
to employ, based on factors including the size of their company, the availability and sophistication
of in-house resources, the size and complexity of the SaaS deployment, and the data volumes
they need to process.
作者: Rex    时间: 2009-8-17 22:00     标题: Re:Data Integration Solutions for Salesforce

For Salesforce customers, these are the three most common integration approaches:
1. Hand coding. Whether done in-house or by consultants, it may seem a quick fi x at fi rst, but it
can rapidly become time consuming, error prone, and very expensive to maintain.
2. On-premise integration platforms and tools. These are installed inside a company’s fi rewall
on a server or an appliance provided by a vendor, then maintained by IT. For organizations
where a skilled systems integrator or IT staffer will implement and manage the Salesforce CRM
integration, this is a good choice.
3. Integration as a service (IaaS) offerings. This refers to on-demand SaaS integration that
itself takes place in the cloud and is maintained by the integration vendor. IaaS is ideal for
organizations with limited IT resources and/or those relying on a Salesforce administrator or
line-of-business analyst to perform and manage the integration
作者: Rex    时间: 2009-8-17 22:00     标题: Re:Data Integration Solutions for Salesforce

Informatica’s Approach to Salesforce Integration
As the recognized market leader in data integration, Informatica has worked with salesforce.com
customers of all sizes since 2005 and understands that no single approach to SaaS integration
will meet every customer’s needs. Accordingly, we have created a complete portfolio of data
integration solutions for Salesforce CRM and the Force.com platform. These solutions enable
companies to ensure data accuracy, improve business decisions and operations, and derive
maximum value from their Salesforce investment.
For Salesforce administrators looking to quickly synchronize their Salesforce data with on-premise
systems, Informatica offers several easy-to-use, self-service IaaS offerings called Informatica On
Demand services.
作者: Rex    时间: 2009-8-17 22:01     标题: Re:Data Integration Solutions for Salesforce

For organizations that are looking for an easy-to-use Salesforce integration offering that is
designed for IT professionals, Informatica offers a powerful and affordable on-premise solution,
Informatica Integration Pack for Salesforce CRM™ (iPack).
For organizations that already use Informatica PowerCenter, our fl agship data integration
software, Informatica offers a native Salesforce connector, Informatica PowerExchange® for
Salesforce CRM™.
作者: Rex    时间: 2009-8-17 22:01     标题: Re:Data Integration Solutions for Salesforce

Informatica On Demand services have been deployed by more than 100 salesforce.com
customers of all sizes and were recently voted “Best Data Integration Tool of 2008” by salesforce.
com customers on AppExchange for their ease of use. Informatica’s on-premise data integration
solutions are deployed at many of salesforce.com’s largest customers around the world. These
solutions are often used to handle complex business rules in real time and process very large
volumes of data.
作者: Rex    时间: 2009-8-17 22:02     标题: Re:Data Integration Solutions for Salesforce

Integration as a Service: A Simpler Choice for
SaaS Integration
Salesforce and other SaaS applications are most popular among small and midsized companies
and individual departments that choose cloud applications for affordability and ease of
management. Traditional integration options such as hand coding or on-premise integration tools
tend to be a poor fi t for these users.
作者: Rex    时间: 2009-8-17 22:03     标题: Re:Data Integration Solutions for Salesforce

Furthermore, such solutions are far beyond the minimal expertise of the line-of-business
employees who generally manage Salesforce and other SaaS applications. In an economy
where IT already lacks the resources to respond to every request from the business, this delays
data integration projects until an IT professional can squeeze them into an already overloaded
schedule—which may take weeks or even months.
As a result, IaaS is the emerging alternative to integrating cloud-based services with on-premise
applications. As with other cloud-based applications, IaaS is fl exible, easy to use, and speeds
time to value for a lower total cost and higher return on investment
作者: Rex    时间: 2009-8-17 22:03     标题: Re:Data Integration Solutions for Salesforce

Informatica On Demand Services: IaaS from the
Integration Experts
Informatica On Demand services are true cloud-based, multitenant IaaS offerings that automate
moving, monitoring, and synchronizing data between back-end systems and Salesforce CRM. End
users need only launch their preferred Web browser and log in to Salesforce CRM to integrate data
from multiple databases and business applications.
Informatica On Demand services fall into two categories:
1. Powerful and fl exible IaaS tools. These tools are designed from the ground up to address the
needs of line-of-business users. They allow a Salesforce administrator to quickly build any
number of integration tasks to synchronize Salesforce data with corporate back-end systems.
The Informatica On Demand Data Synchronization Service™, which synchronizes Salesforce
data with on-premise, back offi ce databases and systems, is an example of an IaaS tool.
Informatica plans to deliver a data cleansing service in the near future
作者: Rex    时间: 2009-8-17 22:03     标题: Re:Data Integration Solutions for Salesforce

Turnkey IaaS applications. These applications are designed for a specifi c integration task and
require absolutely no training to use. They work “out of the box” and are the fastest way to
accomplish such specifi c tasks as loading, replicating, or assessing quality of data. Best of
all, they coexist with and complement any data integration tool or method that salesforce.com
customers might have deployed. Informatica has developed three turnkey IaaS applications for
Salesforce CRM:
• Informatica On Demand Data Loader Service, which imports and exports data between
Salesforce CRM and fi les or databases
• Informatica On Demand Data Replication Service, which replicates Salesforce data to
internal systems for analysis or archiving
• Informatica On Demand Data Quality Assessment Service, which combines powerful data
analysis, matching, reporting, and monitoring to ensure that data is complete, consistent,
and accurate
作者: Rex    时间: 2009-8-17 22:05     标题: Re:Data Integration Solutions for Salesforce

Over time, Informatica will enable partners to deliver their own process-specifi c integration
solutions in a similar manner.
Informatica On Demand services expedite time to value by eliminating hand coding completely.
Based entirely “in the cloud,” these services are designed to integrate directly with both Salesforce
and a variety of common on-premise systems and databases. Simple Web-based set-up wizards
and drag-and-drop functionality empower Salesforce administrators to create their own complex
automated data transformation tasks in a matter of hours—with minimal help from IT.
作者: Rex    时间: 2009-8-17 22:05     标题: Re:Data Integration Solutions for Salesforce

Informatica On Demand services are also fully automated. Once a Salesforce administrator
creates and schedules a job, these services handle all the steps needed to keep data consistent
and current. This minimizes errors while freeing the IT staff to work on other things. It also ensures
results are precisely as timely as they need to be. Administrators can easily schedule jobs to run
daily, hourly, or by minutes for near real-time synchronization, or less frequently for less timesensitive
scenarios. They can even create sequences of jobs in which the results of one drive the
next, for faster response to shifting business conditions.
作者: Rex    时间: 2009-8-17 22:05     标题: Re:Data Integration Solutions for Salesforce

Based on the Informatica Platform
Most importantly, Informatica On Demand services are based on Informatica’s comprehensive
data integration platform, which enables users to access, discover, cleanse, integrate, and
deliver timely, trusted data to the extended enterprise—any data, anywhere, at any time.
With proven reliability, scalability, and security, the Informatica Platform is capable of processing
the largest data volumes and most complex business rules.
Leveraging the power of the Informatica Platform, Informatica On Demand services offer the
convenience, usability, and fl exibility of on-demand deployment and a user interface designed
for the line-of-business end user. For the cost-conscious business, these standalone services
help companies maximize the benefi ts of their Salesforce and other SaaS applications today
and in the future, as their business needs, technology, and data integration challenges grow
and change.
作者: Rex    时间: 2009-8-17 22:06     标题: Re:Data Integration Solutions for Salesforce

Conclusion
Integrating cloud-based application data with on-premise systems is a new IT challenge that
requires a new approach: integration as a service (IaaS). IaaS must be easy for a new type
of user: someone with minimal IT experience who needs results on demand, doesn’t want to
spend a lot to get them, and can’t pull the IT team away from other responsibilities.
IaaS must provide intuitive dashboards, easy-to-use setup wizards, and admin-friendly
productivity tools that let Salesforce administrators handle every step of the integration process
themselves, with minimal help from IT. IaaS makes Salesforce administrators more selfsuffi
cient and productive.
作者: Rex    时间: 2009-8-17 22:06     标题: Re:Data Integration Solutions for Salesforce

The answer isn’t to host an on-premise software solution or appliance originally designed for
IT users and simply call it “a cloud solution.” Informatica has done something entirely different.
With 15 years of enterprise data integration experience, global resources, and a major R&D
investment, Informatica has developed an innovative suite of IaaS offerings called Informatica
On Demand Services.
These robust data integration services are expressly designed for on-demand deployment and
for ease of use. By radically simplifying the user experience, while providing a robust, scalable
data integration solution, Informatica delivers on the promise of cloud data integration




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