There’s been a lot of cloud-washing in the enterprise data integration space — vendors are heavily promoting their hybrid cloud services, yet for many, only a skinny part of their monolithic apps has been “cloudified.”
In an era of “alternative facts,” it’s important to make technology decisions based on truths. Here is an important one: A big data integration solution built on genuine, made-for-the-cloud platform as a service (PaaS) technology offers important benefits including:
- Self-service integration by “citizen integrators,” without reliance on IT
- For IT organizations, the ability to easily connect multiple data sets, to achieve a bespoke enterprise tech environment
These are in addition to the traditional benefits of cloud solutions: no on-premise installation; continuous, no-fuss upgrades; and the latest software innovation, delivered automatically.
Why “built for the cloud” matters
You can’t get these benefits with “cloudified” software that was originally invented in 1992. Of course, I’m referring to Informatica; while the company promotes its cloud capabilities, the software largely retains a monolithic architecture that resides on-premises, and does most of its work there, too.
In contrast, SnapLogic is purpose-built for the cloud, meaning there are no legacy components that prevent the data and application integration service from running at cloud speed. Data streams between applications, databases, files, social and big data sources via the Snaplex, a self-upgrading, elastic execution grid.
In more everyday terms, SnapLogic has 100% cloud fluency. Our technology was made for the cloud, born in the cloud, and it lives in the cloud.
The consumerization of data integration
Further to point 1 above, “citizen integrators,” industry futurists like R. “Ray” Wang have been talking about the consumerization of IT for more than half a decade. And that is exactly what SnapLogic has mastered. Our great breakthrough, our big innovation, is that we have consumerized the dungeon-like, dark problem of data integration.
Integration used to be a big, boring problem relegated to the back office. We’ve brought it from the dungeon to the front office and into the light. It is amazing to see how people use our product. They go from one user to hundreds of users as they get access to data in a secure, organized and appropriately access-controlled manner. But you don’t have a cast of thousands of IT people enabling all this; users merely help themselves. This is the right model for the modern enterprise.
“An ERP of one”
As for the second major benefit of a true cloud solution — a bespoke enterprise tech environment, at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional means — here’s a customer quote from a young CEO of a hot company that’s a household name.
“Look, we’ve got an ‘ERP of one’ by using SnapLogic — a totally customized enterprise information environment. We can buy the best-of-the-best SaaS offerings, and then with SnapLogic, integrate them into a bespoke ERP system that would cost a bajillion dollars to build ourselves. We can custom mix and match the capabilities that uniquely fit us. We got the bespoke suit at off-the-rack prices by using SnapLogic to customize our enterprise environment.”
To my mind, that’s the big payoff, and an excellent way to think about SnapLogic’s value. We are able to give our customer an “ERP of one” faster and cheaper than they could have ever imagined. This is where the world is going, because of the vanishingly low prices of compute power and storage, and cloud computing.
Today you literally can, without a huge outlay, build your own enterprise technology world. But you need the glue to realize the vision, to bring it all together. That glue is SnapLogic.
Find out more about how and why SnapLogic puts best-of-breed enterprise integration within every organization’s grasp. Register for this upcoming webinar featuring a conversation with myself, industry analyst and data integration expert David Linthicum, and Gaurav Dhillon, SnapLogic’s CEO and also an Informatica alumnus: “We left Informatica. Now you can, too.”
Gaurav Dhillon is CEO at SnapLogic. Follow him on Twitter @gdhillon.
