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.

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.

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.

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.

Over the years, as we sell and deploy our software for our customers, we are amazed to see how many companies do not have an Enterprise Architecture approach in place for their IT infrastructure. This is not just limited to smaller companies for whom an IT Enterprise Architecture (EA) may be an overkill but even many mid-sized to large businesses have not yet invested in putting an overarching enterprise architecture in place.

There are many reasons for not having this architecture in place but some of the main reasons we have observed are:

• Growth of business from when EA was not needed to now when it is
• Focus on day-to-day problem solving and short-term IT issues
• Focus on “must-have” needs rather than “nice-to-have” initiatives which is how EA is perceived
• Lack of skills in-house to drive, implement and manage EA

Although having an Enterprise Architecture in place is certainly not needed to successfully deploy Adeptia solutions, we recommend our customers to think about having fundamental practices of EA in place to get the maximum advantage from their investment in Adeptia. A well-executed Enterprise Architecture really gets the most value out of a process-centric and SOA-based software solution such as Adeptia. 

Some of the benefits of Enterprise Architecture are:

• Aligns business strategy with technology investment
• Creates a vision and strategy for Information Technology
• “Blueprint” on how to view and approach IT projects
• Presents a Functional and a matching Technology view for every initiative
• Helps put a plan in place on how to get to the vision in an evolutionary, incremental way
• Provides a structure for consistent IT decision making

An Enterprise Architecture for each company would be unique as it will take into account its business model, strategic objectives, size of the business and IT applications and systems. Adeptia helps its customers by providing a “framework” to help them think about a model for how to design an EA that best meets their needs. Here is a document that describes the Adeptia Enterprise Architecture Framework. (27 slides, 15 mins to review). Please keep in mind this is only a “framework”, which is a roadmap or a starting point, and not a full-blown Enterprise Architecture.

This document recommends having two perspectives to an IT Enterprise Architecture: A Functional View and a Technology View. An EA would have the following four key elements:

• People
• Processes
• Systems
• Information

Each of these elements have a number of other attributes as defined in the document.

We have found that this framework provides an excellent starting point to companies that have not thought about Enterprise Architecture or need a high-level introduction to taking a consistent approach towards all their IT projects and initiatives.