Adeptia Release 5.3
We are excited to announce the recent release of version 5.3 of Adeptia’s holistic integration offering which includes Adeptia’s ETL, ESB, B2Bi, BPM, and EBIM Suites. Release 5.3 includes enhancements across a number of product areas including web services, data mapping, clustering, B2B integration, and event processing. The following table briefly highlights some of the key enhancements:
Click here to download the complete list of 5.3 release notes.
Adeptia Product Name Changes
In an effort to more clearly represent Adeptia’s product offering, we are announcing a few changes to our product naming convention in order to more precisely align ourselves with shifting market terminology.
The following table explains our previous naming convention.
We believe the changes we made will enhance the precision and clarity of consumer understanding regarding our product offering.
- We changed “AIS” to “ESB Suite” to be more precise.
- We redefined “BPM Suite” to align with pure BPM functionality.
- We added “Enterprise Business Integration Management Suite” (EBIM Suite) to define the comprehensive offering.
To explain our reasoning for each of these changes in more detail:
1. We changed “AIS” to “ESB Suite”.
The definition of “Enterprise Service Bus” (ESB) has expanded over the years to catch up with Adeptia’s SOA-based EAI capability, so much so that it only made sense to change the name to “ESB Suite”. The following list of commonly accepted ESB features are all present in this product segment.
The following diagram depicts Adeptia’s “ESB Suite” functionality including a business user and management portal, a web-based design studio, and a process designer and engine.
2. We Redefined “BPM Suite” Functionality.
In addition to renaming “AIS” to “ESB Suite”, we redefined the “BPM Suite” functionality, making it an excellent option for customers who only need BPM. The following diagram depicts the “BPM Suite” functionality. As you can see, B2B functionality is completely removed from the “BPM Suite” as well as some of the “ESB Suite” and “ETL Suite” functionality. However, customers can upgrade from the “BPM Suite” simply by upgrading the license key.
3. We added “Enterprise Business Integration Management (EBIM) Suite”.
We added a new product name, “EBIM Suite,” to define our thoroughly holistic approach to integration that combines data integration (ETL), Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), Business-to-Business Integration (B2Bi) and Business Process Management (BPM) into a single, collaborative, web-based application which provides a simple way to deliver complex data integration for changing business needs without the need for extensive coding. The following diagram depicts the “EBIM Suite” functionality.
Historically, there have never been single integration products or architectures that satisfy all the requirements for connecting or integrating systems. It has always been up to customers to research and choose the option or approach that best suits their particular set of requirements.
Adeptia’s thoroughly holistic integration technology, on the other hand, was developed to bridge the gap between all of the above integration options. Our unique approach satisfies the broadest range of customer integration requirements at economical price points, in which customers pay only for the functionality they need and upgrade to scale just by updating license keys.
Keep an eye out for more on EBIM in the coming weeks!
New Training Room
We are proud to announce the recent addition of a new state-of-the-art, 1500-square-foot training room at our Chicago office!
As part of Adeptia’s commitment to the development of strong customer relationships, we provide on-site product training led by industry-leading product expert Raman Singh and his world-class team. While we continue to provide on-site training at customer locations, we have found that our 2-day training sessions held at our Chicago office have become increasingly popular and highly effective.
Adeptia is growing rapidly on all fronts. The past year saw our revenue increase 88% from 2010, and we’ve added over 100 customers in 2 1/2 years. We are daily developing new partnerships with members of the IT community, and we are constantly looking for opportunities to further the growth of our vision.
In 2011, we held 10 classes representing 20 customers. This new space, which allows us to train up to 30 students at a time, will be the new location of Raman’s on-site training classes. In 2012, we expect to hold at least 15 classes representing at least 60 customers.
Located in the heart of Chicago’s business district, our corporate office is an ideal spot for visitors to the city. A few blocks walk from Water Tower Place, Navy Pier, Grant Park, and Michigan Avenue, our visitors and students are literally surrounded by opportunities to experience and enjoy the city we call home. We highly recommend the restaurant located directly below our office suites. Rick Bayless, world-renowned chef, author, and host of the PBS television show “Mexico: One Plate at a Time,” runs his award-winning restaurants Frontera Grill and Topolobampo a few feet from our front door.
As Adeptia grows, we want to adapt to the needs of our customers as well as to the members of our community. Our vision is to encourage growth and innovation, and the addition of this training room and the sessions it will allow us to offer will help us achieve that.
We hope to see you here with us soon!
For more information on our training classes, visit http://www.adeptia.com/support/training.html
Three Reasons why you should attend the AADI Summit in 2012
Reflecting upon the past business year, one of the most exciting events for Adeptia’s marketing team was attending the Gartner Application Architecture, Development, and Integration (AADI) Summit in November. As the premier gathering for leaders in application technology, we approached the AADI Summit as a serious networking and educational opportunity and emerged with the validation of our identity as an innovating leader within the business integration community. Having spent over a decade researching and developing our mature Enterprise Business Integration Management Platform, we are confident and excited to break out as the frontrunner in the market for comprehensive integration.
1. Educational Sesssions
A major theme that spanned many of the educational sessions was the recommendation to consolidate disparate integration tools and multiple vendors into a single platform. Sessions proved that IT is discovering that application and data integration are better together and that consolidation results in improved quality and consistency, increased speed of delivery, and substantial cost savings. The educational sessions that the AADI Summit offers provides its attendees with the most current trends, both general and specific, that define the future of innovation within the IT community.
2. Professional Networking
Between me and Christine Hadley, Adeptia VP of Sales, we had over fifty quality conversations regarding the value of consolidating into a single, holistic integration platform. In one case, we had a great conversation with a $12.8B company that happened to be located in Chicago, only blocks away from Adeptia’s corporate office. At breakfast one morning, we got to know John Radko, Chief Technology Strategist of Product Engineering at GXS, a global leader in B2B Integration. I also hooked up with Lee Harrison, CEO at Thru, a leader in cloud-based MFT services, and discussed the viability of a partnership that would provide Adeptia with “no latency” worldwide network access. The concentration of IT community peers attending the conference provides an invaluable opportunity for the development of professional relationships.
3. Gartner Analyst One-on-One Meetings
Attending the 2011 AADI Summit provided us with a thumb to the pulse of the most current business trends and market practices, and we walked away with a strong confirmation of the demand for and value of our solution. Based on analyst discussions, peer conversation, and educational sessions, we came away with two major conclusions regarding Adeptia: One; our technology and roadmap perfectly match integration trends and industry best practices, and two; our Enterprise Business Integration Management Platform is thoroughly unique within the industry. Based upon the presentations we attended and the conversations we had with both analysts and peers, our vision of Adeptia as an innovating leader was validated in seeing the market demand for a comprehensive platform for companies in growth mode looking to rapidly implement solutions to solve business problems.
We highly recommend the Gartner AADI Summit and look greatly forward to attending in 2012. We see ourselves using the 2011 AADI experience as a building block in the growth of Adeptia and plan on returning in 2012 as a break-out innovative leader in the business integration community.
It is 2010, and EDI is still going strong?!?
Adeptia announced the release of its EDI Integration Solution. This software solution helps companies automate date flows that generate Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) messages from internal data or process incoming EDI messages and integrate them with internal systems, databases and SaaS applications. Besides EDI-XML integration, Adeptia includes support for trading partner configuration and management. This solution includes support for ANSI X12 and UN/EDIFACT. All X12 standards and release versions are supported – from the popular 5010 and 4010 standards to others including the 4020, 4030 and the earlier 3010. All transaction sets are also supported including the transactions related to Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
An example use of this EDI Integration Solution is for growing manufacturing and logistics companies to automatically handle increasing traffic of EDI messages. Usually the smaller organizations handle EDI in a manual way by using a business person to check manually for incoming EDI messages in the mailbox, download the message, open it in an EDI translator and then visually read the information and type it into their in-house order management, accounting and ERP systems. This approach does not scale when the organization grows and is interacting with many retailers and trading partners who not only want to exchange Purchase Orders and Invoices but also Advance Ship Notices and other transactions and so there are lot of incoming and outgoing EDI messages. This requires an end-to-end, fully integrated EDI solution for automatic processing and generation of EDI messages. The Adeptia EDI Integration solution easily and quickly meets this need.
“Despite advances in XML and Web Services, EDI still remains the dominant standard for data exchange between companies and organizations. Moreover, certain EDI standards such as ACORD AL3 in Insurance industry and HIPAA/HL7 in Healthcare have shown strong growth momentum in recent years. Adeptia has further strengthened the Business to Business Integration (B2Bi) capabilities of its product line with the availability of a powerful, yet easy-to-use EDI Integration Solution.”, said Lou Ennuso, CEO of Adeptia.
Gartner selects Adeptia as a Cool Vendor
In a recent research report Gartner awards Adeptia a prized credential by selecting it as a Cool Vendor in Data Integration. This is an important affirmation of Adeptia’s innovative business process integration technology.
This report, “Cool Vendors in Data Management and Integration, 2010” written by Eric Thoo, Donald Feinberg, Ted Friedman, Andreas Bitterer, analyzes vendors with “innovative approaches and technologies to help organizations improve the scalability of databases, introducing new optimization techniques, integrating data for delivery to software as a service (SaaS)-based applications and ensuring the quality of data across applications and data structures.”
This report is available at the following link on the Gartner website.
Business Process Integration is key to IT-Savvy Companies
There is an excellent interview in the MIT Sloan Management Review and also carried by Wall Street Journal on Nov 30th.
In this article, Dr. Peter Weill is interviewed and he has recently co-authored the book “IT Savvy: What Top Executives Must Know to Go From Pain to Gain”. Dr. Weill believes that companies can increase the effectiveness of their IT investments by treating Information Technology as a strategic asset.
This article really hit home with our team at Adeptia because it articulates exactly the benefits of Business Process Integration that we make to our customers and prospects. Some of the key points (paraphrased) made by Dr. Weill are:
- IT-savvy companies use their technology to reduce costs today by standardizing and digitizing their core processes.
- IT-savvy companies are 21% more profitable than non-IT-savvy companies for two reasons: One is that IT-savvy companies have identified the best way to run their core day-to-day processes. The second thing is that IT-savvy companies are faster to market with new products and services that are add-ons, because their innovations are so much easier to integrate than in a company with siloed technology architecture. Those are the two sources of their greater profitability: lower costs for running existing business processes, and faster innovation.
- When we talk about an operating model, we’re talking about the degree to which a company integrates and standardizes its core processes. Integration, which involves providing access to data across the company, and standardization, which involves reducing variation in the company’s business processes, are the two things IT does better than anything else.
- The real secret to IT-savvy companies is that each project links together—like Lego blocks—to create a reusable platform. IT-savvy companies think reuse first.
We ourselves could not have said it better.
Latest from Google – Public DNS
Google announced on Dec 3rd the launch of a new, free-to-public service – Domain Name System. Link is here.
Unlike many other services provided by Google, such as Google Apps or Google Earth, which are truly unique and new and provide immediate value to its users, the DNS is a system that is at the heart of the functioning of the Internet and it already works well. So why would Google spend its time and effort on something that is not really recognized to be a problem that needs fixing?
Google lists three benefits from this service:
- Better Performance: Google says its has implemented “smart caching” to improve the responsiveness of its DNS system.
- Better Security: Google DNS authenticates responses from other DNS servers to prevent routing to malicious sites and its also helps prevent Denial of Service (DoS) attacks.
- Correct Results: Google Public DNS never blocks, filters, or redirects users, unlike some open resolvers and ISPs.
All in all, this project seems to be driven by Google’s desire to make the Internet safer, better and faster. It will certainly help cement Google’s critical role in the center of all things Internet. It may also help Google collect metrics on the popularity and traffic of websites.
Does this mean it is curtains for companies that provide DNS services for a fee – such as DynDNS, OpenDNS, DNS Made Easy etc.?
Not really. Google says its free offering is NOT a DNS authoritative name hosting service. So, organizations that use these above mentioned companies will have to continue using them for maintaining their domain records.
The new, new thing – Next-Gen SaaS Integration
Document: Adeptia Unveils Next Generation SaaS Integration Solution . (1 page, 5 mins to review).
Traditional SaaS integration solutions have focused on just moving data in and out of SaaS applications. This approach may be fine for some scenarios such as data migration, reporting or synchronization. However, it is quite limiting because real world business problems require users to interact with data flows to review information, make decisions and route tasks. So, Adeptia has extended its existing SaaS Integration solution to allow SaaS applications to be integral part of customer’s business process flows.
For example, an order management process may require moving orders from Salesforce.com to an on-premise ERP system when a sale is completed and order won. However, this process would typically require workflow steps for business users to review and configure the order. A process flow such as this with multiple user workflow steps can be easily and rapidly configured in Adeptia. Adeptia offers an SOA-based, code-free approach with built-in connectivity to many SaaS applications such as Salesforce and NetSuite.
Data integration market has evolved over the last few years as more and more companies have realized that the business problems they were trying to solve by implementing data bridges did not really do the full job. Most problems require solutions that are more complex than just moving the bits and bytes. They require the data to be validated before it can be processed, errors need to be handled, notifications sent automatically on exceptions, information presented to business users to review and make decisions etc. etc. These solutions quickly grow beyond the capabilities of typical “integration products”.
Complete solutions require flexibility to handle various situations and scenarios and this typically requires a process-centric, services-based technology that includes human workflow capability. Integration-centric process management products, such as Adeptia, are best suited for these situations.
Integration Options for SaaS Vendors
Document: SaaS Integration for Vendors. (11 slides, 5 mins to review).
As Software as a Service (SaaS) adoption has grown exponentially over the last few years, many customers using hosted applications have started asking the SaaS application vendors to provide data integration and connectivity capabilities. For various reasons, mainly driven by business needs, customers are looking to tightly integrate their data in the SaaS app with their on-premises back-end systems and databases.
There is an excellent article on this growing need in the Oct 20th, 2008 issue of InformationWeek by Mary Hayes Weier: SaaS Integration: Real-World Problems, And How CIOs Are Solving Them.
At Adeptia in recent months we have encountered an increasing demand from our customers for easy, fast and flexible SaaS integration solutions. Primarily these have centered around integration requirements from customers using Salesforce and NetSuite applications but now we see other SaaS apps as well as the whole market experiences growing adoption.
We have had numerous discussions with a number of SaaS vendors who are looking at how should they approach this whole issue of integration. It definitely seems to surprise the SaaS companies as they have mainly focused on creating the best, feature-rich application they could and have not given much thought to integrating the customer data with their internal systems.
Here are the key elements of advice we offer to these SaaS vendors:
- As with any other business issue, approach SaaS Integration as a STRATEGY and not a tactic.
- This means have an end goal in mind in terms of where you want to be with your integration capabilities and address the immediate customer need in a way (tactic) that puts you on path for that end goal.
- Address this need and grow your capabilities in an incremental but multi-phased approach.
- Bring in the experts since Integration is tough, difficult and complex.
In terms of options available to SaaS vendors, Adeptia offers the following framework:
- Option A: SaaS vendor provides integration services
- Option B: SaaS vendor publishes XML/Web Services interface
- Option C: SaaS vendor refers customers to Certified Partners
This framework is described in this document prepared by Adeptia (11 slides, 5 mins to review) and it covers the Pros and Cons of each option.
As SaaS and Cloud computing adoption grows over time, availability of viable integration options will be expected by customers of any SaaS provider. SaaS vendors who proactively take steps to implement a well-thought out integration strategy will be better positioned than those who treat it as an after-thought.
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