The five tenets of SaaS integration

The success of software as a service rests on IT

Yes, three or four years ago, SaaS was rudimentary CRM, not much more than a contact database in the sky, says Simon Peel, senior vice president of marketing and strategy at Cast Iron Systems. But that picture has changed dramatically.

In fact, many SaaS solutions have become mission-critical. And as the model has moved from the departmental silo to full-fledged enterprise app, seamless integration with other mission-critical apps — such as ERP, CRM, contract management, and supply chain management — has proved key. In short, it’s not just about importing names to Outlook anymore.

Here are the five tenets of SaaS integration, further proof of the lasting importance of IT.

1. Integration takes the hand of a professional

Not to pick on anyone, but sales force administrators have a simple world to live in compared with hard-core IT folks.

Yes, a sales operator can switch on a CRM app just as SaaS vendors promise. But there is a lot more going on when it comes to implementing a fully integrated SaaS solution effectively.

The first thing you want to plug in to your SaaS solution is the master data record of names, addresses, and phone numbers. That way, when a salesperson calls a prospect, he or she won’t get a wrong number because data in your Oracle database wasn’t synched with RightNow.

And it only gets more complex than that. What if a salesperson pushes the order button, but the SaaS CRM application isn’t linked to the warehouse system?

Peel tells me of a major financial services company that uses 10 temporary employees to take data from one application and rekey it into another. If one of those temps doesn’t show up for the day, some orders will not be placed. Here someone needs to understand the workflow and all the business processes from quote to cash — and how to thread them together seamlessly.

2. Multiple parts mean multiple skills are needed

When a sales manger asks for an extract of data on customers or needs billing info and shipping, that’s when the IT team will say, “We knew you’d need to come to us in the end.”

Yes, you may be able to extract and import a CSV file into an Excel spreadsheet, but what happens when you need it again and again? That’s when integration becomes an urgent problem that requires skills beyond the scope of a single person.

The Oracle guy may know the Oracle applications, but do they know how to write code that sends information up to a Web service hosted by the SaaS vendor?

You need somebody who knows both of those things, Peel says. And this is where having a versatile set of skills in the form of the IT department down the hall comes in handy. After all, if you want to perform bidirectional synchronization in real time and you want it immediately, who you gonna call?

3. Shortages translate to SaaS-IT codependency

Ariel Kelman, senior director of platform and product marketing at Salesforce.com, is quick to flip the “SaaS needs IT” idea on its head.

“IT needs SaaS,” Kelman says, adding that every CIO he talks to complains that they don’t have enough time, people, or hardware infrastructure — a good reason why they are starting to look at SaaS.

Kelman does admit that Salesforce APIs are at the lowest level of how every customer integrates and on top of that sits “some type of middleware solution.”

Salesforce offers native connectors to support some of the most common and simple use cases with the likes of Oracle and SAP, but moving beyond, say, master data synchronization requires IT and middleware integration ISVs.

4. Integration in a box or as a service may help broker SaaS-IT peace

Aware of a hole in the SaaS-IT relationship, vendors are moving to fill it.

For example, Procuri, a company that offers SaaS solutions for spend management, strategic sourcing, and contract and supplier management, has partnered with Seeburger, an integration middleware vendor, to offer integration as a service. Procuri takes the Seeburger Business Integration Server and hosts it.

Cast Iron’s solution is offered in a box, either behind the firewall or also as a service. The company packages up the kinds of IT skill sets required for integration. Peel doesn’t claim that you can buy the appliance and ignore IT. Rather, he would say his company’s solution makes integration easier for IT.

As an example, he points out that the appliance allows IT to configure systems for integration using drop-down menus rather than code.

5. At its heart, integration is a four-part story

The major integration issues for IT typically center on four technologies.

First, connectivity to a SaaS solution as an end point: The middleware must understand the Web service calls on one end and the database calls on the other.

Second, mapping — transforming data from one form to another.

Third, intelligent workflow that understands the business rules in play for each operation and that can flag duplicate records.

Finally, guaranteed delivery — the ability to ensure the right information went from one application to another.

Salesforce’s Kelman is right when he says we are at a tipping point in SaaS deployments. It’s no longer a question of whether IT admits SaaS into the enterprise. It’s a question of how IT makes it work.