Everyone knows that one of the biggest tick-boxes on the list of advantages brought by Cloud-delivered services is agility – the way in which resources can be scaled up and down to meet business demand, and services can be created by bringing together existing applications, tools, services and whatever else is needed, quickly and efficiently.
That agility bit, however, is still not always as easy to achieve as it should be; integrating applications is the key trick and is still largely the territory of the hand-carved coders. But tools are starting to appear that should make it easier.
QueCloud is one new example which claims to be amongst the first to provide a secure on-demand Environment for the integration and management of Cloud, SaaS, and on-premise applications without coding. It comes from Queplix, which specialises in data integration and data management, and the company is using NetSuite’s SuiteWorld event in San Francisco to introduce it.
It is the company’s first Cloud-based platform, expanding its product line beyond its on-premise based integration tools, such as Virtual Data Manager. Its target is to provide an environment where the applications and data necessary to support and tailor the implementation of CRM and ERP systems can be integrated with the growing range of SaaS-based platforms such as NetSuite’s.
QueCloud aims to provide an integration platform that automates as much as possible of the implementation process, where existing applications and data sources have to be brought together in a new operational environment. To this end, Queplix has a track record in on-premise data integration in just this type of work. But now it offers the potential ability to link this expertise with new Cloud-delivered services. This could prove to be the type of bridge technology that gives users the flexibility required to build the agile systems that they will increasingly need.
It uses proprietary Application Software Blade technology to provide automatic connection to data sources, coupled with data virtualization to surface the structure of the data sources into the system. It is exploits the architecture of Queplix’s primary product, Virtual Data Manager, to drive the application and data integration process. This is used to configure a series of Application Software Blades that in turn identify and extract key data and associated security information from many different target applications such as Salesforce, Google and others.
From the user’s point of view the data integration process is essentially a tick-box process that aligns the data and the business rules required. So there is no coding, no SQL and none of the widgets and modelling schema that are normal for such exercises.
Queplix is not the first to pitch at this sector of Cloud computing, of course. It will find itself coming up against companies like Cordys and its MashApps technology, which itself operates within the rules and policy-based environment of a Business Process Management toolset.
But this is definitely the way an increasing number of Cloud users will need to go, especially for any business where the ability to regularly modify or change the business processes as the marketplace itself changes is a core part of the business plan. It is also an excellent complement to SaaS systems such as NetSuite.
It is still perhaps too easy for users to think of SaaS delivery as an end in itself, which in turn leads to the classic OR-Gate decision process: SaaS is the answer, OR SaaS is not the answer.
In reality of course, any SaaS delivery is rarely an end in itself, though it will often be a significant component in a much larger, more complex solution. It is but a building block in something bigger. That is why, for example, NetSuite has worked hard to build a comprehensive development environment so that users and others can extend particular service capabilities in areas such as CRM and ERP. But it is unreasonable to expect everything required to be built within NetSuite; there will always be a need to integrate it (and other such services) with a whole panoply of different applications and services.
It is just another instantiation of collective capitalism, where plugging blocks together – not gluing, that is far too permanent – is the important next step in exploiting Cloud delivery.
The model to bear in mind is that building agile business systems will increasingly become a bit like Lego (though I can’t remember these days whether one is allowed to mention Lego as an analogy). Here, the growing ecosystems of the major SaaS service providers create `blocks’ that are more flexible and adjustable (“wouldn’t it be nice if this piece had an extra mounting lug just there”).
Well, sometimes the ecosystem will allow that to be added directly. But more often, it will be the integration tools that make it fast and flexible, so that far more complex, agile and productive services can be created.
