Data Integration Blog -

Purpose-built data integration is designed to meet a specific business need, with very specific capabilities bundled in the solution. Frequently, purpose-built data integration has come as an appliance. For enterprises with broad needs, purpose-built data integration quickly becomes less useful as business needs change and types of projects proliferate. For such enterprise needs, a broad and flexible integration solution platform usually provides the best approach to be able to handle current projects and to scale to address future integration challenges.

But purpose-built data integration services in the Cloud is quite a different story, particularly for making data integration services available to business users. If such Cloud services are set up properly, data integration should now be available to less-technical users to handle integrations between specific applications. Cloud services for integration usually include data replication, migration, and synchronizations for customer data. Typically integrations involve specific SaaS applications like Salesforce.com and Netsuite as “pre-set” sources and targets. Data integration Cloud services should also include data quality tools to employ business users in this important task.

Purpose-built data integration as-a-service solutions tap into the major advantages of cloud computing:

• Pay-as-you-go, pay for only what is used
• Up and running quickly to handle integration tasks
• Always the most current capabilities, without on-premises software updates or purchase of new licenses
• Enterprise-quality capabilities available to companies of all sizes

There is clear advantage for Cloud services that provide specific point-to-point integrations easily and inexpensively. These services work with focused use cases where business users do not have to make lots of decisions about how the integrations will be accomplished. Wizards are employed to walk business users through the process. However, business users must have knowledge of the sources and targets, and basic understanding of the data integration task to work confidently and accurately through the purpose-built approach.