W H I T E P A P E R

Solving Cloud Data Integration:A Key Challenge for SaaS Providers

Informatica’s approach and technology advantage in enabling seamless,

end-to-end data integration for software as a service (SaaS) providers

This document contains Confi dential, Proprietary and Trade Secret Information (“Confi dential Information”) of Informatica Corporation and may not be copied, distributed, duplicated, or otherwise reproduced in any manner without the prior written consent of Informatica.

While every attempt has been made to ensure that the information in this document is accurate and complete, some typographical errors or technical inaccuracies may exist. Informatica does not accept responsibility for any kind of loss resulting from the use of information contained in this document. The information contained in this document is subject to change without notice.

The incorporation of the product attributes discussed in these materials into any release or upgrade of any Informatica software product—as well as the timing of any such release or upgrade—is at the sole discretion of Informatica.

Protected by one or more of the following U.S. Patents: 6,032,158; 5,794,246; 6,014,670; 6,339,775; 6,044,374; 6,208,990; 6,208,990; 6,850,947; 6,895,471; or by the following pending U.S. Patents: 09/644,280; 10/966,046; 10/727,700.

This edition published February 2009

1Data Integration in a Service-Oriented Architecture

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Table of ContentsExecutive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Key Success Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Onboarding Challenge – Initial Implementation Struggles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Operations Challenge – Making SaaS Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Governance Challenge – SaaS Data Usage and Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Informatica Solutions for SaaS Data Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Data Integration Delivered Within an SaaS Provider’s Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Data Integration in the Cloud – Informatica On Demand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10

2

Executive SummaryThe growth of software as a service (SaaS) is predicted to climb at an aggressive, accelerated pace through the rest of this decade and beyond. This growth makes sense given SaaS advantages such as simplifi ed Web interfaces, easy business unit consumption, fl exible confi guration, and subscription-based pricing. Such advantages certainly help the current economic climate, where internal cost controls and increased spending scrutiny are the norm.

However, recent trends and industry information show that SaaS providers may face a fundamental roadblock to their future growth: lack of data integration. As noted in a front-page article in Information Week, “SaaS Under Stress; Integration’s the next big test for software as a service” (Oct. 20, 2008), data integration has become a key issue for SaaS providers, and could become a key inhibitor to future customer adoption and revenue growth. According to the article, as companies begin to put more of their applications, and data, “into the cloud,” mistakes in integrating that data will increase costs, add complexity, and break business processes. SaaS providers need a strategy for “cloud data integration” if they are to increase customer adoption and retention, and ensure market traction and ongoing revenue.

This paper outlines key integration challenges facing SaaS application providers, hurdles impeding selling and delivering a complete solution, and current approaches. It also looks at Informatica’s unique, proven solution to overcome these hurdles and help SaaS providers use data integration as a competitive weapon.

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3Solving Cloud Data Integration: A Key Challenge for SaaS Providers

Key Success ChallengesSaaS providers must overcome the following four challenges to be successful:

Onboarding Challenge – Initial Implementation StrugglesThe initial data integration challenge facing a SaaS provider is the need to onboard customers easily and securely. In most cases, the onboarding process involves a migration of existing data from a customer’s environment through the Internet to the SaaS provider’s “cloud”. The data could be as simple as a spreadsheet or CSV fi le but can be more complicated in format, metadata structure, and volume. It may also be locked in an existing application requiring extraction. For some organizations, data being migrated to a SaaS application may contain sensitive content and must be securely managed throughout the migration.

Onboarding stumbles can impact customers’ critical fi rst impression and drive them away from longer-term use. Without a well-designed data integration process and infrastructure that handles a variety of data formats, assists with extracting customer data from existing applications, scales with data volumes, and ensures security and robustness of synchronization, SaaS application adoption can suffer.

Operations Challenge – Making SaaS ScaleIn rare instances, the upload/migration of data is a one-time event. More frequently, data needs to be incorporated on a regular basis from the customer environment into the SaaS provider’s environment, or synchronized in real time with another customer-premised or SaaS-based application. Many SaaS providers lack an adequate infrastructure to handle synchronization, in which reliability, failure detection, and guaranteed delivery are critical.

Connectivity is also a challenge for SaaS providers trying to extract data or synchronize with existing customer applications. If each new subsequent application requires development, testing, and delivery of a connectivity solution, the SaaS provider ends up spending precious resources on infrastructure rather than innovation.

Multi-tenancy is an important design point for most SaaS providers to simplify management and customer scale. But in most cases multi-tenancy isn’t carried over to the integration layer due to the complexity of problem and focus on developing other core application infrastructure.

If a SaaS provider gains market traction, scalability of the data integration process will likely be an important requirement for maintaining growth. Without a scalable infrastructure supporting a repeatable process, supporting customer growth will be impacted.

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Governance Challenge – SaaS Data Usage and ControlIn today’s climate of corporate and data governance, prospective SaaS customers are under strict scrutiny to demonstrate data protection and controls. Because data from SaaS applications is often also used by internal systems, like data warehouses, SaaS providers need to implement and demonstrate strong data integration practices, controls, and technology.

Hand-Coding Challenge – Resource Drain

To solve some of the initial data integration issues, most SaaS providers hand-code an integration solution to move and process data based on specifi c need. This approach works when the number of client companies is small, the number of “connectors” is small, and end-user application use is homogeneous. But, as a SaaS application gains market traction or is adapted for different user requirements, a hand-coded solution often morphs into a larger-scale development project requiring signifi cant internal development and maintenance resources. Hand coding data integration solutions is typically not a core capability for SaaS providers, and this extended use of internal resources detracts from development and delivery of end-user functionality and application innovation.

Hand-coded solutions also face scalability challenges when data volumes rise or customer numbers grow. As noted earlier, multi-tenancy of the integration layer is a challenging problem that can impact a SaaS provider’s ability to add and service new customers.

Fortunately, there is an alternative.

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5Solving Cloud Data Integration: A Key Challenge for SaaS Providers

Informatica Solutions for SaaS Data IntegrationInformatica offers two ways to address the data integration challenge. The fi rst is modular software that can be meshed, branded, and delivered as part of a SaaS provider’s application environment. The second is a set of on demand integration services delivered through Informatica On Demand™.

Data Integration Delivered Within an SaaS Provider’s Environment For application providers that want to offer their own, branded data integration capability delivered through their own environment, Informatica offers a comprehensive set of modular capabilities to solve the SaaS data integration challenge. Tailored to specifi c needs and based on market leading, proven data integration software, Informatica’s solution enables SaaS providers to leverage individual capabilities or a complete solution depending on their business model or use case spectrum. SaaS-specifi c pricing models are also available to fi t with subscription-based offerings.

For SaaS providers that want to implement a data integration solution, Informatica offers a multi-tenant, scalable platform with use-case specifi c user interfaces, a broad range of connectivity, unparalleled transformation, customer management, and a development kit for the embedding aspects of data integration into a SaaS application. Most of Informatica’s SaaS partners chooseto deploy data integration as part of their application environment and have done so withgreat success.

SaaSSolution

CustomerTargets

Database Messages

Unstructured Data

Flat Files XML

Payload

Mapping Rules

Synchronization

Figure 1. Sample SaaS Integration Architecture

“Manufacturers depend on SignalDemand to help them make key decisions on price, product mix and production. Informatica’s data integration technology allows us to provide our customers with the right information at their fi ngertips,” says Rip Gerber, senior vice president at SignalDemand. “We use the Informatica platform as the data integration backbone of our solution and are pleased to work with Informatica to ensure our customers always have the most reliable and trusted data for their business needs.”

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Informatica’s SaaS solution offers the following key capabilities:

Simplifi ed User Interfaces - The PowerCenter® platform features a variety of user interfaces to simplify data mapping, including Microsoft Excel, Visio, Web-based wizards, or PowerCenter Mapping Designer functionality. Most SaaS providers target a specifi c user such as an auditor, business analyst, or report consumer. Informatica’s variety of interfaces and development kit enable a SaaS provider to deploy a user interface designed specifi cally to an application’s need and audience, whether it is simple and Web-based, tailored for a role, or complete functionality.

PowerCenter’s development kit provides a customizable, comprehensive Web-based application template and documentation to help kick-start tailoring of the user interface. The APIs allow data integration design to be embedded in existing UIs as part of an existing application or as a standalone SaaS service.

“A signifi cant percentage of every Callidus SPM deployment is data integration,” says Steve Apfelberg, SVP of Product Marketing and Business Development, Callidus Software. “Without Informatica, we would have to develop our own integration solution; and that would take too long and would place unsustainable pressure on our resources. Through its OEM partnership with Informatica, Callidus has a reliable, metadata-based solution that enables reusability, allowing us to prepackage mappings and [transformations unique to each customer solution.”

Figure 2. An example of data mapping in Excel SaaS UI Development Kit

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7Solving Cloud Data Integration: A Key Challenge for SaaS Providers

Structured, Unstructured Data Transformation – PowerCenter supplies a market leading, high-performance transformation engine and B2B data transformation extensions for unstructured and industry-specifi c data formats such as Excel and EDI-Fact. Only Informatica offers out-of-the-box data transformation capabilities to handle any data format a customer may use to exchange data with a SaaS provider. Often, forcing end customers to preformat and transform data themselves before exchange is a roadblock to SaaS success. By offering fl exibility of format, SaaS providers can more easily incorporate end-customer data into their solution.

High Availability/Multi-Tenancy – Application service-level agreements (SLAs) are now a common component of SaaS deployments and those guarantees need to be extended to the data integration portion of an overall solution. Informatica PowerCenter is the only data integration platform based on a highly available/multi-tenant internal architecture. When paired with a high-availability database and fi le system infrastructure, SaaS providers can meet their end-customer SLAs, ensure overall application availability, and scale a single infrastructure as they grow.

Managed File Transfer – For many SaaS providers, the primary data integration use is moving fi les from a customer location through the cloud into a SaaS provider’s environment. This process needs to be fl exible, scalable, recoverable, and able to handle a variety of communication protocols. Informatica offers a standalone or integrated solution for managed fi le transfer that includes a simplifi ed user interface to specify details of the transfer. Encryption and a variety of industry protocols are also supported to ensure security and end-customer acceptance.

Customer and Profi le Management – One part of managing the exchange of data between a customer and a SaaS provider is establishing the schedule, process, and profi le about the exchange. Using Informatica’s Data Exchange platform extensions, a SaaS provider can speed the onboarding process by offering a Web-based interface to capture customer information, data details, data exchange scheduling information, and other metadata about the data integration. SaaS adminstrators or customer end users can use this Web-based interface to control and manage the integration of data.

Figure 3. An Example of a Customer Profi le User Interface

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End-to-end orchestration, scheduling, and monitoring – Determining what action to take if a data exchange fails is an important aspect of any data integration solution. Specifi cally for SaaS, because multiple systems or “hops” can be involved, simple tools that help orchestrate the process and spell out problems are a must. These capabilities are part of Informatica’s Data Exchange platform extensions and help operations run smoothly and effi ciently. Figure 4 gives an example of Data Exchange Event Monitoring.

Figure 4. Data Exchange Event Monitoring

SaaS Connectivity – Applications in the cloud have introduced a new layer of connectivity not previously supported by data integration offerings. Informatica followed the early efforts of protocol standardization and added a Web-services platform layer in 2004 with the introduction of PowerCenter 7 and PowerExchange™ for Web Services. This layer has been augmented and enhanced as security standards evolved, and it is the basis for connectivity to Salesforce.com, Concur, and other SaaS-based offerings.

Informatica’s Developer Kit for PowerExchange also provides sample code and documentationfor leveraging the Web-services layer or fi le-based exchange to produce a SaaS-specifi c connectivity solution.

SaaS Packaging and Pricing – Informatica’s SaaS solution is offered through a variety of fl exible packaging and pricing models. Depending on the SaaS architecture and data integration needs, a specifi c solution can be licensed with a matching model—term based, end customer based, or revenue based, for example—with the appropriate set of platform capabilities.

“The use of Informatica as a reliable, timely and accurate data access and delivery mechanism for our on demand performance management solution has helped both our clients and our own corporate performance,” says Robert Lasher, CEO, iPartners, a leading provider of on demand management information and analysis solutions to the property and causality insurance industry. “We chose the Informatica data integration platform to enable our clients to integrate complex fi les containing business process data into our repository in order to power Web-based performance analysis on metrics provided by clients. Informatica understands the requirements of cloud computing by providing the requisite near-universal data access capabilities and easy development to help streamline the on-boarding of clients, and has saved us incalculable time, money and effort in trying to develop such capabilities in house.”

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9Solving Cloud Data Integration: A Key Challenge for SaaS Providers

Data Integration in the Cloud – Informatica On DemandAs an alternative to data integration delivered within a SaaS provider’s environment, Informatica On Demand offers a hosted data integration service, or data integration “in the cloud.” Informatica On Demand automates the synchronization and migration of data to and from an SaaS provider and a customer environment. It offers a radically simplifi ed business user interface that drives data mapping and a small footprint downloadable agent for connecting customers with the cloud. Informatica On Demand leverages the industry’s leading data integration platform—PowerCenter—and its unique multi-tenant capacity, security, availability, and scalability as a foundation.

Informatica On Demand is available for a 30-day free trial for prospective SaaS providers that want to integrate with Salesforce.com. Specifi c offerings are available for SaaS providers looking to leverage the same services for their environment.

Figure 5. Applying transformations to data using the Informatica On Demand Data Integration service

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ConclusionAs the noted growth of SaaS applications continues, solving the inherent data integration challenges associated with adding customers, securely exchanging data across Internet boundaries, and synchronizing with premised enterprise applications is critical for SaaS application provider success.

Informatica’s SaaS-specifi c solutions leverage the same core data integration technology that more than 5,000 customer implementations use in mission-critical enterprise environments. With fl exible pricing and packaging and specifi c SaaS capabilities, Informatica enables SaaS providers to deploy a tailored data integration solution specifi cally for their needs.

By going with the market leader, SaaS providers can showcase data integration as a fundamental competitive advantage and achieve their revenue and customer success goals.

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© 2008 Informatica Corporation. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. Informatica, the Informatica logo, and The Data Integration Company are trademarks or registered trademarks of Informatica Corporation in the United States and in jurisdictions throughout the world. All other company and product names may be trade names or trademarks of their respective owners.

6935 (02/13/2009)