DCN August 2016 | Page 30

hybrid integration

MIX TO THE MAX

Ashwin Viswanath of Talend looks at how hybrid integration , broken down into five phases , can help businesses overcome the challenges emerging from digital business .

According to the Digital Universe study by IDC , global data volumes will grow from 4.4 zettabytes in 2013 to 44 zettabytes by 2020 . That ’ s a staggering increase . Managing all of this new data represents several opportunities for businesses , but also significant challenges . After all , it ’ s not just the volume of data as much as the increasing variety of data sources and formats that presents a problem .

With mobile Apps , machine data , on-premises applications and Software as a Service ( SaaS ) all flourishing , we are witnessing the rise of an increasingly complicated information value-chain ecosystem . IT leaders need to incorporate a portfolio based approach and combine cloud and on-premises deployment models to sustain competitive advantage . Improving the scale and flexibility of data integration across both environments to deliver a hybrid offering is vital to providing the right data to the right people at the right time .
The evolution of hybrid integration approaches creates requirements and opportunities for converging application and data integration . The definition of hybrid integration will continue to evolve , but the ‘ direction of travel ’ is clearly to the cloud .
Gartner is projecting dynamic growth in public cloud spending . According to the research firm , the worldwide public cloud services market is projected to grow 16.5 per cent in 2016 to total $ 204bn , up from $ 175bn in 2015 . The highest growth will come from cloud system infrastructure services ( Infrastructure as a Service [ IaaS ]), which is projected to grow 38.4 per cent in 2016 .
The increasing focus on the cloud means that customers will need to have an effective hybrid integration strategy . At Talend , we have identified five phases of cloud data integration , starting with the oldest and most mature and going right through to the most bleeding edge and disruptive . Here , we provide a brief overview of each phase of that integration and highlight how businesses can optimise the approach as they move from one step to the next .
Phase 1 : Replicating SaaS apps to on-premise databases The first stage in developing a hybrid integration platform is to replicate SaaS applications to onpremises databases . Companies in this developmental phase typically either need analytics on some of the business critical information contained in their SaaS apps , or they are sending SaaS data to a staging database so that it can be picked up by other on-premises apps .
So as to increase the scalability of existing infrastructure , it ’ s best to move to a cloud based data warehouse service within AWS , Azure , or Google Cloud . The scalability of these cloud based services means businesses don ’ t need to spend cycles refining and tuning the databases . Additionally , they get all the benefits of utility based pricing . However , with the broad range of SaaS apps today generating even more data , they may also need to adopt a cloud analytics solution as part of their hybrid integration strategy .
Phase 2 : Integrating SaaS apps with on-premises apps Each line of business has their preferred SaaS app of choice : Sales departments have Salesforce , marketing has Marketo , HR Workday , and Finance NetSuite . However , these SaaS apps still need to
30