4 Experts Answer Top Of Mind Integration Questions
eBook | 12 pages | The fourth industrial revolution is disrupting every business sector and integration is on the top-of-mind for everyone
ANSWER TOP-OF-MIND INTEGRATION QUESTIONS
INTRODUCTION CONTENTS Consumers and businesses alike are in the midst Introduction 2 of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This blurring of Opportunity for Integration boundaries between the physical, digital, and biological in an Open Ecosystem 3 worlds is contributing to amazing advances in artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and many other Meet the Experts 4 technologies, creating products and services that are Importance of Integration 5 fast becoming indispensable to modern life. It is paving Conquering Challenges 7 the way for unprecedented changes in the way we live, communicate, interact, and connect. Make it Sticky 9 Conclusion 11 The Fourth Industrial Revolution is radically disrupting almost every business sector, changing what is possible, and with it, transforming consumers’ expectations. Because of this, connectivity — and specifically, integration — is top-of-mind for everyone in the ecosystem. 2
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OPPORTUNITY FOR INTEGRATION In An Open Ecosystem As artificial intelligence and machine learning grow to Analysts project be a bigger part of Salesforce customers’ technology, continued growth in the greater the opportunity grows. Industry analysts next four years worldwide project continued growth in the next four years for iPaaS and API Management markets - 15.3% CAGR and 6.6% CAGR, respectively, within the global infrastructure market.* The IT landscape is moving toward microservices architectures that prize 15.3% 6.6% best-of-breed solutions. And upleveling integration as part of an overall business strategy is key to driving digital transformation. CAGR in IPaaS CAGR in API management Partners are crucial to driving the next phase of Salesforce as an open, evolving platform. Continue reading to hear from four experts in the ecosystem on why integration is important and how partners are meeting customer challenges head-on in Industry 4.0. * Gartner Forecast: Enterprise Infrastructure Software, Worldwide, 2017-2023, 1Q19 Update , Vanitha Dsilva, Laurie Wurster, et al., 26 March 2019. 33
MEET THE EXPERTS Markus Zirn Steve Wood VP of Business Development Chief Product Officer LEARN MORE > LEARN MORE > Andrew Leigh Allegra Margolis VP of Worldwide Channels Senior Manager, and Alliances Product Marketing LEARN MORE > LEARN MORE > 4
IMPORTANCE OF INTEGRATION Why is integration Andrew Leigh, Jitterbit important for everybody, At this point in time in the market, there are over 150,000 including customers SaaS applications available to customers. SaaS applications and partners? are available in every sector and every segment of the IT market. We have gotten to a place where the applications are extremely plentiful. How you connect those applications? That is what will determine your strategic advantage in the digital marketplace going forward. Markus Zirn, Workato Simply put, any business using software today should be integrating data and automating workflows. An employee’s decisions and productivity depend on writing and reading information from multiple software sources. Studies show that context-switching kills productivity. If employees are forced to waste time jumping between apps, not only do you increase the possibility of errors and forgotten tasks, you can kill their day-to-day productivity. Overall, customers make and save more money and work faster if their data and apps are integrated with each other. 5
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Overall, customers make Steve Wood, Dell Boomi and save more money and With the proliferation of cloud technologies and the number work faster if their data and of companies depending on data to make decisions, the need apps are integrated with to integrate applications and data sources confidently and each other. at scale has never been greater. For customers, integration — especially when coupled with data quality, API management, Markus Zirn and workflow automation — can be a game-changer; it can VP of Business Development make data-driven decisions easier, it can improve their Workato interactions with their own customers, and, among other things, it can make them more competitive and agile. Allegra Margolis, MuleSoft Connected customer experiences have become the new battleground. In the fourth industrial revolution, the customer is always connected, and they expect personalized interactions, no matter where they are. Data and processes within the enterprise, however, are highly fragmented. We are committed to helping our customers orchestrate these systems quickly and nimbly, both systems within and beyond the Salesforce ecosystem. 6
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CONQUERING CHALLENGES What challenges do Steve Wood, Dell Boomi you see customers The main challenge integration addresses for customers facing when it comes is disparity. Disparity of data sources, disparity of to integration? information, disparity of efficiencies. Integration is the connective tissue that automates business processes and thus eradicates disparity. Andrew Leigh, Jitterbit The biggest challenge that people have with integration is actually succeeding with the integration, particularly in regards to how fast you can get the integration up and running. Integration has been with us from the very beginning of information technology. The fact is, every technology, every application – even if it has an API – communicates with different protocols, with different standards, in different languages, and getting those applications to communicate with each other is challenging. 7
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Integration is the connective Allegra Margolis, MuleSoft tissue that automates The business is demanding more and more. Enterprises business processes and thus today have around 900 applications - but only a third of those eradicates disparity. applications are integrated making it increasingly difficult to have a model of growing revenue and scale. It all comes down Steve Wood to speed and with an increase in IT projects year over year, Chief Product Officer Dell Boomi there needs to be a smarter approach to integration. We want to help our customers do more than simply “keep the lights on” and deal with maintenance - we want our Trailblazers spending their time on innovation to meet the demands of the business. Markus Zirn, Workato From massive enterprises to fast-moving innovators often the biggest challenge is choosing what integration and automation bottleneck to breakdown first. Business teams today move fast - they can sign up and begin using a new cloud app in minutes. They can’t afford to wait months and months for integration specialists to get around to their projects. These bottlenecks really push teams to look for a new approach to integration. 8
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MAKE IT STICKY How should partners think Allegra Margolis, MuleSoft about integration in their Partners should be thinking about integration as a strategic overall business strategy? enabler of the business. To truly build an application network requires connectivity across data, devices and applications, including partners. With our MuleSoft partners and our Salesforce partners we are getting greater leverage in helping customers build a truly connected experience. Markus Zirn, Workato Integration equals stickiness. An application is easy to replace — a business-critical process is not. If you are part of a chain of time and money saving workflows, then your product becomes exponentially harder to replace. Integration should be fundamental for not only expansion but for protection of hard-earned wins. 9
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No application and no Andrew Leigh, Jitterbit platform can exist in today’s No application and no platform can exist in today’s digital digital world as an island. world as an island. If you are a siloed application or a siloed set of data in today’s modern digital IT portfolio, you will be Andrew Leigh replaced. Today’s companies work based on connected digital VP of Worldwide Channels & Alliances Jitterbit processing. Every application and every process must be strung together in a way that delivers a unique and compelling customer experience that’s different than their competitors. Steve Wood, Dell Boomi If you have the ability to quickly and easily connect data from their solution to even a fraction of the other data sources or apps within a prospective customer’s company, they just became indispensable. By embedding an integration platform into their own solution, you just made it easier for the prospect to become a customer, and to retain and grow that account. The reality is that customers are going to need to either extract, import, or exchange data from a solution with other apps or data sources, at a minimum. Which means that integration should almost always be part of your go-to-market strategy in one way or another. 10
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CONCLUSION Rapidly evolving customer expectations are the new LEARN normal, bringing connectivity to the forefront of MORE AT business. By demystifying integration, companies can begin to better understand and craft a strategy to tap into the open ecosystem opportunity that lies ahead. joinappexchange.com The Fourth Industrial Revolution is writing a new, connected future as we speak — and partners have an immense opportunity to help build this new world. 11
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