The Cost of Enterprise Integration
At Cazoomi, we value our consultant, member, partner network, and their collective input into our adaptive business model as it hones how we approach certain obstacles in the marketplace, as well as makes our network stronger. Throughout 2010, and especially this Summer, our network provided us with tons of input into how we can help them easily move their data without the pain or hassle usually involved in switching SaaS vendors.
We have been focused on how to create an easy way for SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses) to get the data integration they need to avoid what we term the “SaaS Trap”. Instead of being tied to the SaaS application vendor who holds their data, the SaaS vendor would have to work for their business consistently, or else, SMBs could easily take their data and their business to someone else who meets their needs.
SyncApps by Cazoomi helps them do just this with a network of integration framework partners. The platform allows them to finally control their customer and contact data which always seems to be the “Achilles heel” of why they were reluctant to go with the vendor that made sense for their company.
Our guest blogger this September has been helping our members solve this issue and even wrote a short piece for our network to read, so I thought I would put it out to a larger audience. Meet BlueAcrobat, a key Cazoomi Network partner.
What is application integration?
Many companies these days use multiple systems to manage their business, accounting, inventory, CRM (Customer Relationship Management), support ticket systems, etc. All this business data is often scattered between many systems, and as a result, data duplication and data consistency problems exist. Today, a lot of these applications also run in “the cloud”. The most popular applications are Salesforce.com (for managing customer and lead information), Intacct and NetSuite (for managing accounting and inventory), SAP, Zendesk (for support), all hold mission-critical business data.
The best example of data that often resides within multiple systems is a contact list. For example, when you add or update a new contact in your accounting software, the same contact needs to be manually keyed into all of your other systems. This process can be very time and resource-consuming if you are dealing with thousands of contacts. The same scenario applies not only to contacts, but also to customer records, sales transactions, leads, opportunities, tasks, and many other types of business records shared between applications. Speaking of larger businesses, which sometimes hold 100s of thousands of records across multiple platforms, this problem can become very significant and hinder the efficiency of the entire organization.
Solution #1: Platform-based integration
To solve the problem of data-duplication, manual entry, lack of data consistency, companies such as Cast Iron Systems, Boomi, Pervasive, JitterBit, Adeptia, SnapLogic – have developed platforms which make it easy to connect and sync the data between systems.
How does it work? Typically, these vendors offer a dedicated server-environment coupled with a user interface to help set up the enterprise integration. These services can be set up to act as a middle-man between two or more of your applications, and sync the data.
For example, if you use Basecamp for project management and Salesforce for customer relationship management, the integration platform will allow you to map a connection between the two systems. These platforms understand the web services API of both systems, and can now act as a middle man and keep the data in sync. Depending on the system, you may be able to schedule how often you’d like the synchronization to occur. The cost of integrating your business application using the above-mentioned vendors varies from one to another.
A typical scenario may involve a purchase or a lease of the enterprise integration server license, as well as connectors for each of the applications you may want to integrate. What is the cost of platform-based integration?
After doing a bit of research, here are some numbers which I have collected from publicly available websites of the vendors mentioned above.
Cast Iron Systems Integration Pricing: Pricing of Cast Iron Systems would start at about $36,000/year plus the cost of professional services to help set it up. Boomi Integration Pricing Cost of Boomi Base starts at around $6,600/year and comes with two connections. Also offers “widget” integrations which are set-up.
Pervasive Integration: Pricing Cost of Pervasive starts at around $16,000/year + designer $6,000/per person/per year (includes all the connectors).
JitterBit Integration: Pricing Cost of JitterBit integration starts at around $15,000/year.
Adeptia Integration: Pricing Cost of Adeptia integration starts at about $14,000/year.
SnapLogic Integration: Pricing Cost of SnapLogic starts at about $10,000/year for the integration server (unlimited data, unlimited connections, 100+ connectors) plus the extra cost for individual snaps.
In my experience, the above solutions are suitable for businesses with revenues of about $20M/year and up.
A lot of small businesses will not be able to afford integration servers and the cost of using the above platforms.
Solution #2: Custom Direct Integration
There are a number of solutions out there which offer a simple direct enterprise integration between two target systems. These can be significantly cheaper than using a dedicated integration platform and a much faster ROI.
Solution #3: Built-in Integration
Many applications are built with integration capabilities already. If you are in the market for a CRM solution, or any application, it is wise to have a look at what type of integration capabilities are built-in to the software out-of-the-box. This may just end up saving your business thousands of dollars in additional software/server licensing.
