Integration Solutions a Must for SaaS Providers in 2012

As I have written in 5 Crucial Technology Development Trends in 2012 earlier, IT service consumers have either started consuming cloud services (SaaS being the most widely adopted) or have the plan in their overall business strategies to migrate to the cloud. This trend is true both for the enterprise organizations and start-ups/SMEs. The advantages of SaaS are well-known and truly appreciated. As a result, SaaS applications form an important component of the overall corporate software stack, especially in the enterprise organizations.

So, why is Integration Solutions necessary?

1. SaaS applications, by virtue of their nature, are more appropriately described as point solutions and are provided for one line of business. But being one component in the entire corporate software stack it needs to talk to other software components across various functions in an enterprise. Usually data from one functional department is needed in other departments and hence a layer of integration between them is required. SaaS, being offered more as a silo solution, needs integration solutions for it to be able to synchronize data across the enterprise.

Similarly, for SMEs who are looking for expanding their business, need to get their data synchronized. Because of its cost efficiency, SaaS finds an extensive acceptance among the SMEs and start-ups. But if the data synchronization does not happen in a cost effective way, then the SMEs will hit the dead end. This is so because the integration tools available are expensive. They will add to the costs which the SMEs may want to avoid. Secondly, SMEs might have to transfer data manually and be prepared to handle errors. Third, they spend money by doing an ‘integration’ project for their internal purpose. Now this means pulling off their meagre resources off their main line of businesses into integration and automation of various software applications.

Naturally, this isn’t going to prove to be a viable option and will necessitate cost effective integration solutions from SaaS vendors to be able to get more business and grow in 2012. Since SaaS has been the most accepted cloud model, many vendors have forayed into the market. This situation itself creates a competition and necessitates cost effective integration solutions from SaaS vendors, as a strategy to differentiate them from the competition.

2. APIs available in SaaS solutions are apparently not sufficient for integration purposes for which they are developed by some SaaS vendors. Unfortunately, there is no standardized format of SaaS APIs, which results in end users spending a lot of their time and resources in coding, just to make the APIs of different SaaS applications deployed communicate with each other.

3. Although conscious efforts are put by SaaS vendors into making sure that the customers’ data is secure within the hosted environment, it should also be part of their integration solutions to make sure that the data transferred outside the on-premise applications to the SaaS application is secured. Similarly, data transfer happening in real-time for synchronization from SaaS applications to the on-premise applications must ensure that the data is encrypted with highest security standards.

Thinking forward, this poses a great opportunity to come up with hosted integration services as a special field which encompasses the enterprise-wide cloud data security issues. The year 2012 will see the real integration solutions unfold with data synchronization and security as the primary focus.

What is your take?