SnapLogic May 2018 Release: Connecting the digital ecosystem

Tag: iPaaS

SnapLogic May 2018 Release: Connecting the digital ecosystem

Posted on by Thomas Pauly

We’re pleased to announce the general availability of SnapLogic Enterprise Integration Cloud May 2018 Release. Enterprises need to respond to digital insights faster and we continue to expand and update our cloud integration platform on a quarterly basis to help our customers integrate business critical elements of their digital ecosystem.

The May 2018 release includes supercharging our partnerships with Adobe, SAP, and Apigee-Google, and also adding the ability to create a dynamic runtime Snaplex in Docker to assist with highly elastic containerized environments.

We also now provide high availability for Ultra Pipelines and have improved security with Snaplex node whitelisting. We don’t want to leave our UI behind, so we continue to make improvements to it for a better user experience for integrators at all levels.

Starting with this release, Platinum support customers can choose when to upgrade their software within 30 days of our scheduled release update time to avoid any disruption in projects underway during the scheduled update. For more information, read the blog post: “The SnapLogic Selectable Update Window – for sustained business operations.”

New integration to Adobe Experience Cloud and SAP Analytics Cloud

Powerful analytics platforms that drive digital business decisions help enterprises get the most out of disparate data sources across their digital ecosystem. Our new Snap Packs for the following two industry-leading analytics platforms help customers achieve digital business initiatives faster:

  • Adobe Experience Cloud Snap Pack: Use the Adobe Experience Cloud Snap Pack to integrate data from CRM, marketing automation, campaign management, content management, and marketing analytics systems to the Adobe Experience Cloud platform to provide data-driven custom content to the right channel and at the right moment along a customer’s journey. Watch the demo here.
  • SAP Analytics Cloud Snap Pack: Use the SAP Analytics Cloud Snap Pack to integrate data from other SaaS platforms like Salesforce, Workday, NetSuite, and Anaplan to do comprehensive analytics for planning, predictive analytics, and business intelligence (BI). Watch the demo here.

Enhanced API Integration and API Management

The SnapLogic Enterprise Integration Cloud (EIC) platform continues to provide a best-of-breed iPaaS platform for API creation. We have made it possible for organizations to achieve a connected digital ecosystem by now supporting API management through out-of-the-box Apigee integration and Swagger Document Creation.

API Management with Apigee – Google Cloud

SnapLogic’s new integration with Apigee is an out-of-the box feature that makes APIs created in SnapLogic directly available to the Apigee platform.

Once you have SnapLogic-created APIs available in Apigee you can publish them to a developer’s portal, perform traffic management and monitoring, as well as monetize access from API consumers.

In platform view of creating Apigee API Proxy
Out-of-the-box SnapLogic and Apigee integration allows lets you make APIs created through SnapLogic directly available in Apigee

Support for Swagger Files

And now, APIs created in SnapLogic can easily be published to any API management platform. We have added support for generating Swagger files that document SnapLogic created APIs for use with any API management solution, such as 3Scale, CA Technologies’ Layer 7, Amazon Web Services, Kong, Axway, and more.

New support for Snaplex Nodes in Docker Containers

The May 2018 release provides new support for Snaplex nodes that run in Docker containerized environments. This means that our SnapLogic runtime nodes spin up and down to achieve the same elastic benefits that other microservices running in containers do – meeting the demands at scale rather than being over- or under-provisioned in a more static environment.

New high availability support for Ultra Pipelines

You can now deploy ultra and triggered tasks in two or more Snaplexes, eliminating geographic failovers. After creating Ultra Pipeline tasks that run in a main Snaplex, you can designate a backup Snaplex in the event of a failover. If tasks cannot run in the main Snaplex, then the tasks run in the backup Snaplex, ensuring high availability delivery and using the same URL across all endpoints.

Graphic portraying how REST calls are delivered to a a backup Snaplex.
High availability support for Ultra Pipelines eliminates catastrophic failovers and ensures delivery.

Added support for Snaplex Node Whitelisting

At SnapLogic, we take security very seriously and help our customers prevent getting hit by malicious activities that can impair their business. With the latest update to our cloud integration platform, you can now specify the specific IP addresses or IP address ranges for the nodes you want deployed to a Snaplex. This node whitelisting feature provides security by preventing nodes without an identified IP address or range from being included in the Snaplex. The node cannot be a part of the Snaplex even if it has the right set of keys to enter. Lastly, SnapLogic anticipates being compliant with the GDPR ahead of the May 25, 2018 deadline.

Improved help resources and new walk-through tour

As part of our focus on providing a leading self-service experience, we have provided a “walk-through” tour that provides explanations of the key elements of the EIC platform to help new user become familiar with the environment. In addition, we have expanded the Help tab to make it easier to access the various resources available to our users, including beginner “how to’” videos, our product documentation, and the SnapLogic Community from this single location.

A list of the product resources that new and advanced users have access to within the SnapLogic platform.
New and advanced users have access to product resources directly from the SnapLogic platform

The following image shows examples of the text when users first log on to the platform. Hover across areas of the UI to see the explanation text. You can choose to dismiss showing this feature at any time.

Example of key elements of the SnapLogic Enterprise Integration Cloud UI and how to assemble an integration workflow on the canvas.
The EIC “walk-through” tour shows users key elements of the UI and how to assemble an integration workflow on the canvas

We continuously improve our existing Snap Packs to ensure that our users can take advantage of the latest features and capabilities from the below applications and data frameworks:

The May 4.13 release accelerates our ability to partner with industry-leading technologies and solutions and helps citizen integrators connect to enterprise digital ecosystems more easily and faster using SnapLogic Enterprise Integration Cloud.

We hope that you are as excited as we are about the May 2018 release. Look for more detailed blog posts on each of these new and enhanced features. Stay Tuned!

Why iPaaS and REST APIs win at connecting mobile app data

Posted on by Thomas Pauly

Digital experiences are the new norm as they promise to change our day-to-day routines for banking, healthcare, transportation, entertainment, and so on. The idea is to improve our experience – making it easier or faster, whatever it is. As a result, we see features constantly changing and being updated in many of our mobile apps.

A seamless digital banking experience

Like many, I took a digital leap to do most of my banking on my mobile phone. I receive a check, open the bank app, take a picture of the front and back, specify the amount, and cha ching – money is transferred into my account within a day. I used to manually press the phone’s camera button but now it automatically takes a picture when I zoom to the check. Thanks, developers.

Think about all the backend systems that must be integrated for online banking to occur. An integrated system of applications, databases, and all kinds of services must interact together almost instantly for this process to work successfully.

A not-so seamless digital healthcare experience

But not everything is going to go as smoothly as my online banking app. The other day, I had an early doctor’s appointment followed by an important phone call with a colleague at work. I did not want to miss the call or scramble from the car to my desk while on the call.

I decided to plan ahead and arrive on time to get in and get out. I used a mobile app from my healthcare provider to get through the system faster. It provides a barcode to scan at check-in with all the information I typically need to fill out when I check in manually.

Without the mobile healthcare app, I would have had to grab a clipboard, sit down, fill out a form, and go back to the desk. It can take up to 15 minutes or so and they often say to arrive 30 minutes before your appointment for this reason.

Instead, I filled out all the information the night before and had a quick response (QR) code similar to the one shown below to scan at check in to get through faster.

Mobile doctor appointment check-in app with QR code

The next morning, I had my barcode open on my phone in the elevator going to the floor for my appointment. The elevator was pretty full as we all were rushing to get somewhere in the building. Someone blurted out, “Don’t get your hopes up, that phone thing isn’t working.”

Sure enough, a smiling greeter on the floor for my appointment said, “Put that away, you have to manually sign in.”

Yikes. Everything to do with the appointment took longer than expected. Afterward, I got on the call in my car and had to stall for 15 minutes with my colleague until I got home in front of my computer, exactly what I had planned on preventing. (Incidentally, we were working on an integration demo for SnapLogic. My story resonated with him, too.)

I wondered what caused the failure with my mobile check-in app. Was it something to do with the integration backend or was there an issue with some system in the facility where they did not have a barcode scanner or some other reason? Maybe the QA team flagged the app because of some security requirement.

How REST APIs provide seamless mobile experiences

In any case, we know that modern, iPaaS strategies make this all possible. In a mobile app case, REST APIs from iPaaS integration projects give these digital services access to systems that have customer profiles. They then provide the ability to retrieve data associated with the profiles and other related systems.

The integration of all the data and associated analysis becomes easier when you have exposed the APIs to integrators who seek specific data to help with their agile digital business initiatives.

In a previous blog post, “APIs power digital business with data-driven results,” I discussed the five API integration features that are crucial to a digital business plan:

  • Being able to connect to APIs without manual coding – Prevents errors and reduces the need to have in-house programming skills
  • Retrieving and processing only the specific API data necessary to achieve a particular outcome – Reduces overhead and complexity
  • Being able to reuse the connector, once connected to an API, within and across departments – Helps maintain consistency and reduces overhead
  • Having a one-to-many API data flow as well as having a many-to-many API “composite” data flow – Provides flexibility and efficiency
  • Executing any API call at the location closest to the data source – Provides more efficient processing with less networking overhead

Having an iPaaS solution that makes it easier to connect important data via REST APIs to mobile apps like my banking or healthcare app, can make enterprises more agile so they can deliver digital business value faster and more accurately. Now, if only my healthcare provider’s app had worked like it was supposed to.

For more information about enterprise agility, read the white paper, “Agile companies and digital transformation: Where iPaaS and APIs come together.”

 

Gartner Names SnapLogic a Leader in the 2018 Enterprise iPaaS Magic Quadrant

Posted on by Thomas Pauly

I’m pleased to share that Gartner has once again named SnapLogic a Leader in this year’s Enterprise Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) Magic Quadrant in 2018,* based on our completeness of vision and ability to execute.

Below is the Gartner Magic Quadrant itself, and you can access the full report here.

Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Integration Platform as a Service, April 18
Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Integration Platform as a Service, April 18, 2018

This is a tremendous honor and we see it as validation of our unique approach to a thriving integration market. Helping customers innovate and transform their businesses by thinking strategically about integrating their apps, APIs, data, and things is our passion. It’s always great to see that passion and expertise recognized. You can read our thoughts on how the integration market is shaping to anticipate customers’ needs in these two blog posts from my colleague, Craig Stewart.

But this year’s Magic Quadrant marks the third straight year SnapLogic has advanced in the both the “ability to execute” and the “completeness of vision” axes,* and adds to what has already been a fantastic year for us:

We share this recognition with all our customers, partners, and employees who fuel our passion for innovation and our desire to simplify and accelerate integration for our customers. We’re all looking forward to sharing continued success with you all!

*Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Integration Platform as a Service,” Keith Guttridge Massimo Pezzini Eric Thoo Bindi Bhullar Betty J. Zakheim, April 18, 2018

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from here.

Evaluating enterprise iPaaS solutions? Ask yourself these 8 questions

Posted on by Thomas Pauly

App and data integration have dominated the news headlines of late, and for good reason. Companies are urgently moving their data and operations to the cloud so they become faster, more agile, and more data-driven. CIOs are leading the charge as IT becomes the Data as a Service (DaaS) function, arming their company with the best data possible so decision-making and innovation continuously improve.

CIOs are challenged to provide the best data across the company, and that seemingly straightforward task has become more complex with the proliferation of SaaS applications, the surge in big data, the emergence of IoT, and the rise of mobile devices, all of which must be integrated so workers across an organization can use in-context data every day. IT’s integration backlog has exploded and they can’t possibly hire enough people to manage their integration projects the old-fashioned way – by writing tons of custom code. Not only is the deployment too much work, but the cost of maintaining all of the integrations accelerates as well.  

The key is to use a modern integration platform that can scale from tactical projects (e.g., point-to-point integration) to the most strategic initiatives (e.g., supporting global digital transformation). The best integration platforms will be able to:

  • Support multiple app and data integration use cases across cloud, on-premises, and hybrid deployments
  • Provide a self-service user experience that aided by AI and along with hundreds of pre-built connectors, results in greater user productivity and faster time-to-integration
  • Have an underlying, scalable architecture to grow with you as your data and integration requirements evolve

Choosing an integration platform

But, as I’ve learned from talking to dozens of companies over the past few months, selecting an integration platform is not an easy one-size-fits-all decision. The truth is – not all integration platforms are created equal. Some are good at simple point-to-point cloud app integrations while others are good at moving and transforming large and complex data into a data lake for advanced analytics. Some require extensive developer resources to hand-code APIs while others provide self-service, drag-and-drop offerings that can be used by IT and LOBs alike. Some are good for specific tactical projects while others are more likely to be considered as a strategic, enterprise-wide platform for multi-year digital transformation.

Bottom line: I’ve been asking inquiring prospects a series of questions to help them identify the right modern integration platform for their unique needs. And I see no reason to not share them more broadly. So if you’re evaluating enterprise iPaaS solutions, ask yourself these eight questions when deciding on an integration platform that’s right for your organization.

  1. What are your key projects? Do you need a tool to solve a tactical one-off integration challenge, perhaps for a single Line Of Business (LOB) function? Or are you looking for a robust platform to underpin more strategic, enterprise-wide integration initiatives?
  2. What does your app and data landscape look like, and what are your priority use cases? Do you have a mix of on-prem and cloud or multiple clouds? Are you looking to streamline operational processes such as hire-to-retire or order-to-cash, or load multiple data sources into a data lake for advanced analytics? Or do you have multiple and varied infrastructure, deployment, and use-case requirements?
  3. Who are the target users of your integration platform? Are they skilled developers, data scientists, or LOB analysts? Do they all reside within central IT, or are you cascading integration projects to hundreds of users with varying degrees of technical proficiency across the business? Are ease of use and fast time-to-integration key requirements?
  4. Are you moving to a lean IT environment? Is your IT team supporting an increasing number of projects without an increase in staff? Is IT the only group that would be using the platform? Are your LOB users demanding self-service?
  5. How are you measuring the value that an integration platform brings? Are you looking beyond the initial up-front cost to the total cost of deployment and maintenance over time? What about the number of people required to manage the integration platform? How much training is required for a user to be productive? How quickly can the users create integration flows?
  6. Is platform independence important to you? Are you primarily a single-vendor shop (having organized around a primary cloud platform, ERP, or database) and can cost-effectively benefit from their bolt-on integration tools? Or do you require an independent, feature-rich, best-of-breed solution?
  7. Are you upgrading, consolidating, or pursuing a net-new integration platform? Are you trying to upgrade from older legacy integration platforms, consolidate multiple platforms to a single enterprise standard, or starting from scratch with a new platform built for a hybrid/multi-cloud world?
  8. Are you a SMB or large enterprise? Are you growing? Will you expect your integration platform to scale with you as you grow?

Integration framework In focus

Below is a diagram I use to explain the different types of integration projects and the corresponding vendor solutions that line up best. I also talked about this an earlier blog post, “Why isn’t your company 100-percent data-driven?” On the vertical axis, we have the type of integration scenarios, from tactical, one-off projects up to strategic, enterprise-wide initiatives. On the horizontal axis, we measure the productivity and speed/ease of integration you get with each solution. The solution you choose will depend on how you prioritize your integration project needs and internal resource capabilities, along both axes.

Integration framework chart describing enterprise-scalable solutions versus productivity

Why SnapLogic?

Answers to the above questions should help you navigate the growing and diverse mix of integration solutions to find the one that is right for you. Here is what SnapLogic offers and the key reasons customers choose our Enterprise Integration Cloud platform:

  • Single, unified platform for app, API, data, and things integration
  • Self-service UX, powered by Iris AI, for both IT and LOB users
  • Cloud-native, elastic, scale-out architecture for high volume data processing
  • Robust library of 450+ pre-built Snaps covering the majority of integration endpoints and transformations
  • Tactical project support to strategic deployments and enterprise-wide platform support

Want to learn more? Download the white paper, “A comprehensive guide to the enterprise integration cloud” now or start a free trial.

 

Big takeaways from the Big Data Paris 2018 Congress and Expo

Posted on by Thomas Pauly

This year’s Big Data Paris 2018 Congress and Expo just ended and I was more than lucky enough to represent SnapLogic there with a presentation. Happy to say that the winter weather didn’t deter me or the other 15,000-plus attendees from talking big data. Now in its 7th year, this year’s conference focused on how big data is disrupting business processes more than ever, along with the trends toward the democratization of data and its business uses. As big data ROI becomes more measurable, it’s become central to large organizations and their missions around fraud detection, customer satisfaction, anticipating outages or business opportunities, improving operational efficiencies, and “name your concern.” Now more than ever, big data requires investment and thoughtful leadership across any large organization.

During my presentation, “Overcoming the challenge of multiple data frameworks in a multiple cloud environment,” I talked about how a major hurdle for today’s technology leaders is the need to be able to manage several data frameworks that reside in multiple clouds all with varying standards to due multiple vendor solutions. To overcome this challenge and glean insights from these data lakes, enterprise leaders will turn and are turning to iPaaS and managed services for big data integration.

To learn more, view my presentation below:

Enterprise integration with iPaaS – Let technology win

Posted on by Thomas Pauly

During my first days at SnapLogic, I attended our annual Sales Kick-Off (SKO). As a new employee, this event was a perfect way to get immersed in SnapLogic. I absorbed as much as I could from customer and partner presentations and I learned a whole lot about our positioning and strategy as an integration platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) vendor.

Two key points that came across from just about every customer presentation are that the SnapLogic Enterprise Integration Cloud solution has a low total cost of ownership and that it provides the ability to get data and applications integrated faster using a user-friendly interface.

During the presentations, I was impressed by a worldwide IT services customer who used the expression, “Let the technology win” to describe how SnapLogic was able to fix a problem related to a poorly designed application that was causing a lot of headaches during their digital transformation strategic planning.

The customer described how one of the developers from his global enterprise team was tasked to fix the poorly designed application issue knowing that the recoding was going to be daunting. The project was estimated to take several weeks and consume a lot of engineering resources. When this developer was presented with the SnapLogic integration platform, he found a way to extract the necessary data from the poorly designed application and launch the company’s digital initiative much faster. When they weighed their decision between whether to code or use SnapLogic, the solution that solved the issue technically faster won the debate.

Like most SKO events, there were sessions for specific use cases. One of the most interesting sessions I attended was for our API integration capabilities. At first, I was thinking we were going to hear about all the well-connected API integrations that we have and the ability to connect to anything with a “Snap API” that can access any public and some private APIs.

That was definitely true but there was a lot more to consider. I was introduced to a fast-growing trend in API integration that involves curating your own APIs.

SnapLogic provides the capability to build an API from your connected Snaps (pre-built connectors). A series of connected Snaps are called “pipelines” that provide source and target data flows between any two endpoints. Think about it. SnapLogic can do all the heavy lifting of your API integration needs from any of your connected Snaps by generating a well-defined API based on the pipeline data in your SnapLogic Enterprise Integration Cloud account.

Essentially, SnapLogic can publish or create easily-managed custom APIs from the data flows that you have defined in pipelines. There’s no need to worry about the native APIs of your connected Snap sources. As they update, so does the SnapLogic generated API.

To say I was impressed is an understatement. The SKO experience for me confirmed I joined a company with forward-thinking, very relevant technology and that I will be working with a great team of smart and results-oriented engineers, sales folks, and of course my marketing team.

Also, during my first week, I got started on my own SnapLogic Free Trial and built my first pipeline. I realized quickly that our solution is able to abstract very complicated backend processes into a user-friendly interface that helps complete integration tasks in minutes or days compared to weeks or months of coding. Stay tuned for more updates from me and particularly related to our API capabilities.

Want to find out more about our Free Trial? Here’s how to get started.

Managing a rising tide in post-merger cyber vulnerabilities

Posted on by Thomas Pauly

“In a series of blog posts, I will explore how industries and companies are tackling Digital Transformation and how integration plays a critical role in the program’s success. Below is part one on M&A Cyber Risks.”

Global mergers and acquisitions chalked up a resilient $678.5 billion in deal values in the first half of 2017, up nearly 9 percent from the same period last year. Mega-deals over $10 billion in value reached record heights and total deal values are at their best since the financial crisis reared in 2008. This is good news for dealmakers, of course.

Yet many M&A deals fail to live up to their promise. The landscape is littered with unsuccessful mergers and acquisitions, companies that didn’t heed obvious risks that, in retrospect, were avoidable. Rather, dealmakers focused on the benefits of the transaction, such as prospects for a larger market share, competitive advantages, reduced costs, increased efficiencies, and more diversified products and services.

Certainly, the risks must be given as much attention as the opportunities. A case in point is the threat of cyber attacks. Once a deal closes and the two companies begin to integrate their operations and systems, their cyber risks increase—dramatically in many cases. Indeed, the integration phase is when the “crown jewels” of both parties are most vulnerable to a cyber attack.

As the buyer and the seller commence the process of combining hundreds of systems and applications, their respective data at the intersection points of the transfer are exposed to an attack. The reason is the need to temporarily remove the filters at these endpoints so data can flow from one system to another. A gaping security hole is pried open, one that hackers can easily exploit.

Once inside the network, hackers can access sensitive, proprietary data about each entity’s operations, financial status, and future plans. This data can be leveraged to extort a ransom from the combined company—if it doesn’t pay up, the confidential information will be leaked to competitors and the public, damaging the reputation of the business and potentially derailing the merger’s hoped-for benefits.

Cyber threats abound across the M&A post-transaction integration terrain. It’s likely that each entity will have different IT policies, cyber security standards and controls, and different procedures with regard to how it collects, uses, transmits, stores, and shares personal information and other categories of data. These differences make it difficult to ensure proper steps are taken to integrate the companies’ systems and applications, increasing the combined organization’s vulnerability to a cyber attack.

A related threat is the possibility that employees from the company with weaker cyber security standards and controls may do risky things that the other company’s employees are explicitly forbidden to do—like open an attachment in an email that looks suspicious. Phishing attacks tend to increase during the systems integration phase of a merger or acquisition because hackers are aware that each party will be using its current email system until they’re integrated. Hackers realize that it’s difficult for an employee at former Company A to discern if an email with an attachment from a senior executive at former Company B is the real thing, making them more likely to click on an infected attachment.

Another post-transaction cyber risk is the cyber security standards of third party vendors. Often, the buyer will retain an IT consulting firm to assist the systems integration. Since the firm will be inside the corporate perimeter, it’s critical that its cyber security policies and procedures are top-notch. Otherwise, the firm can be an entry point for hackers to access both transacting parties’ data, as the massive breach of Target underscored. The entry point for the hackers was the retailer’s third party HVAC vendor.

Yet another risk has to do with the sheer number of IT systems and cloud applications in use by companies today, making the process of integration more complicated. These days it’s not uncommon for a company to have inked partnerships with more than a hundred different cloud providers. When two organizations combine, integrating all the applications, systems and other sources of data consumes an inordinate amount of time. It now takes longer for the combined organization to realize the perceived benefits of the transaction, increasing the opportunity for competitors to seize market share.

Obviously, there is a need for data integrations to occur quickly and seamlessly, minimizing the time in which the oceans of data flow from one system to another, from one application to another. Best practices include identifying all the data assets that need to be transferred first and then determining the specific data standards, policies, and processes that will be used to conduct the transfer. Rather than transferring all the data at once, consider a piecemeal approach in which different data sets are prioritized for transfer at different times. Data that isn’t destined for transfer should be immediately destroyed.

Lastly, invest in integration tools that make it fast and easy to connect applications and different sources of data. Legacy technology requiring teams of developers to handcraft integration software on an as-needed basis is no way to address today’s rapidly expanding universe of cloud applications. As the Internet of Things (IoT) takes off, integrating all the Big Data that will emerge requires a much faster solution.

Our mission at SnapLogic is to make it fast and easy for companies to integrate data and applications. On a single platform, users can rapidly connect diverse systems and applications at their vulnerable intersection points, narrowing the window of opportunity for hackers to attack. Data transfers flow at enterprise speed, accelerating the pace of post-transaction integrations. In turn, this assists dealmakers to realize the perceived value of the merger or acquisition at a much quicker rate—adding up to a rare win, win, win.

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