Jitterbit CloudReplicate – Syncing Salesforce.com Data With A Database On AWS

Jitterbit (see previous CloudAve coverage here), the Oakland based data integration company, today announced Jitterbit CloudReplicate for Amazon EC2. Jitterbit offers both appliance based downloadable and cloud based integration solutions to enterprises of all sizes. I got interested in Jitterbit because they also offer their platform under one of the open source licenses. In October, they announced Jitterbit Connect For Salesforce, a connector which will seamlessly connect their CRM data with their other On-Premise and Cloud Systems. They extended the idea further and offering the new turnkey solution called Jitterbit CloudReplicate.

The Problem

As more and more organizations start using SaaS solutions like Salesforce, Netsuite, etc., their data is increasingly getting locked into these services causing different silos. Various integration solutions are offered to break these silos get the data from one application to another (either with another SaaS provider or on-premise applications). Even though this solves some of the silos related problems, businesses need more than just integrations between the applications. They want their data on a relational database for not just retention and retrieval but also to use other powerful applications like some of the Business Intelligence tools. Without this ability, The silos are still present at different levels and organizations are missing out crucial knowledge still left in their stored data.

For example, let us take the case of data stored inside Salesforce.com. Even though Salesforce.com is a leading SaaS provider with powerful functionalities and a robust Force.com platform to build applications around the Salesforce data, there is still some need to get the data out of Salesforce.com and have it in a relational database. Some use-cases include:

• Organizations can do some deeper analysis of their customer data using powerful analytical tools. Because of some shortcomings in the Salesforce query language and lack of powerful analytics applications on Force.com platform, some organizations need to take their Salesforce.com data and put it in a RDBMS system
• Another aspect is cost savings. For many organizations, only a small part of their data are transactional in nature and rest are static historical data. Storing this data on Salesforce.com is very expensive. A better alternative is to store this historical data elsewhere while keeping the transactional data inside Salesforce.com. Amazon Web Services offers a cost effective storage solution where the historical data can be stored
• When large enterprises move their CRM data from their legacy systems to Salesforce.com, it cannot be done overnight like how I migrate my data from my desktop to laptop. They take several months to migrate and while in the process, they will want to check data quality, etc., of the data already put in Salesforce.com. Storing the data in the form of relational database will come handy for such tasks

Clearly, there is a need to take out the data from the SaaS providers and store it in the form of relational databases on the cloud.

Jitterbit Solution

Jitterbit CloudReplicate is exactly targeted to tackle this gap. This gives their customers the ability to access their data in a relational database of choice on Amazon EC2. The data from their SaaS applications can be mirrored to a central data warehouse on Amazon EC2 and Jitterbit exposes this data as web services (Data as a Service, anyone?). The users can then unleash additional value from their SaaS data and even use some powerful business intelligence tools on their enterprise data.

For example, organizations can access their SaaS data and use tools like Business Objects, Cognos, Jaspersoft, etc. because their data is now available on a relational database. CloudReplicate provides standards based connectivity and graphical tools so that even non-technical business users can mine the data across many dimensions, at any level of detail and also generate real-time reporting for the business. Ok, it is not actually real-time per se but organizations can set up to sync every minute so that they can get almost real-time access.

Some of the features include:

• Data can be stored in MySQL, SQL Server and Oracle-based Data Warehouses in the cloud
• The data can be secured using a public-private key solution so that only the apps with access to the private keys can access the data
• Preconfigured AMIs are available for the setup
• Very affordable pricing starting at $899 per month

CloudReplicate for Salesforce will be available from Dec 1st and such connectors for other Cloud applications will be available in the future.

Is it unique, BTW?

Well, there are many integration providers who offer consulting services for getting the data out into a relational database. This is the only turnkey solution I am aware off which lets the organization’s users do it themselves without any need for outside help. In fact, it is so easy to use for even non-technical users to set it up themselves.

Conclusion

As we move towards a world dominated by data with worries about having the data locked-in with cloud vendors, solutions like Jitterbit CloudReplicate will come very handy. It not only helps organizations backup their data on third party SaaS providers, it also help them gain valuable intelligence by using powerful analytics tools.

Related articles

• Jitterbit Offers Deeper Integration With Salesforce (cloudave.com)
• Startup offers ‘virtual private SaaS’ for Salesforce.com (infoworld.com)
• PaaS Strategy: Data not Code (enterpriseirregulars.com)
• Insight as a Service (enterpriseirregulars.com)