How to avoid SaaS integration gotchas

If you're using software as a service (SaaS), it might sound like a good idea to use integration as a service (IAS) offerings as well. After all, why build your own custom integration links to share data with other enterprise apps when you can place those integration headaches in the cloud, alongside the application that needs them? But there's a few things you should know before making that choice.

While I touched on this in the SaaS integration headaches story that ran this week, some important points hit the cutting room floor due to the limitations of the printed page.

Two ways to integrate

Informatica has a foot in both worlds: It offers both on-premise and IAS. Ron Papas, senior vice president and general manager of Infomatica's On Demand group, says the key advantage to using hosted integration tools is that they facilitate rapid development. That's important because, while on-premise software tends to go through upgrades every 12 to 18 months, SaaS vendors may revise their software three or more times each year. IAS vendors help to ensure that customizations done for customers continue to work.

However, using IAS turns a two-way communication between two applications into a three-way conversation with the hosted integration service provider - and a third potential point of failure. With some hosted services all of the data moves through the vendor's servers. In others, such as Informatica's offering, the data moves directly between the applications; only metadata resides on the IAS vendor's servers in the cloud.

The prebuit integrations

SaaS vendors provide some canned integration links, but those prebuilt integrations don't always work as advertised. Sealants manufacturer H.B. Fuller Co. tried to deploy Workday's Human Resources SaaS application and push data out to the latest version of ADP's PayForce service. It was supposed to work - but didn't. "What you really want is for the provider to have worked that out before they bring it to you. I wouldn't do that again," CIO Steven John says. Going forward he wants to see a history of integration successes before he'll sign on. His team isn't afraid to roll its own integrations. They did some custom coding to allow Workday to communicate with the company's identity management system, but kept it simple: It only exchanges flat files.

Don't do everything at once

H.B. Fuller also has Salesforce.com but hasn't fully integrated all of its capabilities as yet. While it's important to have an integrations framework within which to work, slow and steady wins the day. "You don't have to plan all of your integrations on day one," he says.

Using a SaaS integration pro

Michael Iovino created an entire ERP system using tools from Salesforce.com that integrate with the on-premise financials system at AuthorSolutions, a publishing on demand business. Iovino, CIO, uses BizTalk as the integration layer between on premise applications and the Salesforce suite. "We're definitely on the cutting edge- and it hurts," he says. He brought in Salesforce parter Appirio to do the integration work for him.

He says another pain point is development environments that don't migrate custom code automatically from development through to production. On the plus side, Salesforce allows AuthorSolutions to have multiple development environments, and the company has 16 enterprise environments running.

But not all of the custom code will automatically move between environments. Let's say you have development, stage, test and production environments, as Iovino does. When you migrate code through those environments on the way to production there's a lot of rekeying and cutting and pasting of code. The staff has to make sure that every object and custom code configuration moves beteen the environments. While the problem persists, Iovino says it's better than it was. "Right now Salesforce is saying that 75% of my codebase will move over, and they are making gains," he says.

In addition to testing and code migration headaches, Iovino ran up against limits in how many records can be passed in a single API call. AuthorSolutions can't just make a single call to see a list of every book sold last year, he says. "That needs to be considered when you're looking at it as a service-oriented architecture platform. That's a gotcha."

Scaling: Things get complicated quickly

Scaling up SaaS also remains a challenge, because the number of integrations required can multiply quickly, says Debra Brown, IT director at H.B. Fuller. While the company has completed one integration with ADP, as it expands the system globally it will need to repeat the process many times over. In the Asia Pacific region, for example, it works with many different payroll system vendors. "As integrations increase, the complexity can increase as well. That's why having a standard change management process and tool set is going to be key," she says.

Overall, however, most users consider SaaS a win, despite the integration glitches. At H.B. Fuller, SaaS has relegated IT's role to that of an integrations developer for its hosted HR and CRM applications - and that's exactly what John wanted. "I prefer that we [use] a SaaS model so that my people can focus on our core revenue stream applications," he says.