Cloud Integration:

4 Key Recommendations

White Paper

Talend White Paper

4 Key Recommendations for Cloud Integration

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Table of Contents

Introduction .................................................................... 3

Cloud Computing Adoption on the Rise ................................... 4

Cloud Especially Attractive for SMBs .................................. 4

What Does Cloud Computing Mean to You? ............................... 5

Private Cloud ............................................................. 5

Public Cloud .............................................................. 6

Hybrid Cloud .............................................................. 6

Integration Required, Yet Concerns Block Cloud Adoption ........... 7

Main Characteristics of Integration for Cloud ............................ 8

Elasticity .................................................................. 9

Ubiquity ................................................................... 9

Extensibility ............................................................. 10

Security and Reliability ................................................ 11

A Unified Approach to Cloud Integration ................................ 11

What to Look for in a Cloud Integration Solution ..................... 12

Conclusion – Five Questions to Ask ....................................... 12

Talend White Paper

4 Key Recommendations for Cloud Integration

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Introduction

Cloud computing is changing how businesses manage their IT assets

and automate their business processes. In this new environment, IT

resources are no longer housed solely on-premise and boundaries of

business-to-business applications have become blurred.

As business solutions evolve to embrace cloud computing, it is only

natural that integration solutions must change as well. The old

approaches to integration based on centralized hubs no longer suffice.

The elasticity, ubiquity and extensibility of the cloud demand a new

class of integration solutions that must traverse corporate and

geographic boundaries and must be able to adapt to changing business

needs. Forward-thinking organizations choose integration solutions

that can not only address the needs that cloud computing presents

today but also adapt to future challenges.

Open source integration solutions that are lightweight, easily

embedded and modular are the best option for integrating today’s

hybrid cloud deployments. And with enterprise features such as

security and reliability, such integration solutions can help address the

perceived weakness of cloud-based applications for mission-critical

business functions.

This white paper presents the key characteristics of cloud computing,

the integration challenges this deployment model introduces, four

recommendations for what to look for in a solution and five key

questions you should ask when considering cloud integration solutions.

Talend White Paper

4 Key Recommendations for Cloud Integration

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Cloud Computing Adoption on the Rise

Business users were first attracted to cloud-based applications and

software-as-a-service (SaaS) from vendors like Salesforce.com,

NetSuite and WorkDay because they are easy to use, manage and

provision, and they offer a ―pay as you go‖ pricing model. According to

a recent eWeek survey, 64 percent of companies have implemented at

least one SaaS application in the past two years. By 2013, that number

is expected to increase to 77 percent, and nearly half of these

organizations plan to roll out at least four SaaS applications.

i

Gartner defines cloud computing as ―a style of computing where

scalable and elastic IT-related capabilities are provided as a service to

customers using Internet technologies.‖ As companies continue to look

for ways to reduce costs and gain flexibility in their IT infrastructures,

cloud computing applications and platforms offer substantial benefits.

These include:

Rapid time-to-value. With no hardware or software to deploy

and manage, cloud-based applications minimize the demand on

IT resources and speed time to production.

Cost efficiency. Subscription-based pricing models make cloud-

based applications and platforms more affordable upfront.

Organizations pay only for the resources they use and can

monitor their usage to ensure a greater return on investment

(ROI).

Ease-of-use. Setting up and maintaining SaaS applications is

achieved through configuration, not coding—an approach that

organizations often can handle with minimal training.

Cloud is Especially Attractive for SMBs

Small- to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) are embracing SaaS and cloud-

based solutions even more rapidly than larger enterprises. According

to IDC, ―small and medium-sized business cloud adoption will surge.

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4 Key Recommendations for Cloud Integration

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Adoption of some cloud resources will top 33% among U.S. midsize

firms by the end of 2011.‖

ii

Yet Gartner estimates that 10% of SMBs

with less than 100 physical servers will move their data centers

entirely to the Cloud by 2015. The majority of SMBs will need to

integrate on-premise infrastructure with cloud-based applications.

Gartner Dataquest Market Trends – We estimate by 2015

that 10% of SMBs with fewer than the equivalent of

100 physical servers will move their data centers

entirely to external clouds.

iii

Cloud application platforms have stepped up their offerings to go

beyond mere productivity applications, such as email, spreadsheets

and word processors, to offer real business applications like CRM and

ERP. These emerging offerings make cloud computing especially

attractive to SMBs, as they have access to the robust functionality that

was previously only available to large enterprises, and at significant

expense.

What Does Cloud Computing Mean to You?

As organizations evolve to embrace cloud computing, it is only natural

that integration solutions must change as well. In addition to SaaS,

many businesses are supported by a complex ecosystem consisting of a

combination of on-premise, platform-as-a-service (PaaS), e-

commerce, and cloud-based applications. There are three models of

deployment for cloud – private, public and hybrid cloud.

Private Cloud

With a private cloud, the cloud infrastructure (e.g., mission,

security requirements, policy, and compliance considerations) is

operated solely for an organization. It might exist on- or off-

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4 Key Recommendations for Cloud Integration

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premise and could be managed by the organization or a third

party.

Public Cloud

A public cloud infrastructure is typically made available to the

general public or a large industry group and can be owned by an

organization selling cloud services or shared by several

organizations to support a specific community that has shared

concerns. It may be managed by an organization(s) or by a third

party. As with a private cloud, it could exist on-premise or off-

premise.

Hybrid Cloud

In a hybrid cloud, the infrastructure is a composition of two or

more deployment types that remain unique entities but are

bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that

enables data and application portability (e.g., cloud bursting

for load balancing between clouds). Hybrid clouds often

incorporate on-premise infrastructure.

Figure 1: Organizations might implement any combination of the three deployment models of cloud –

private, public and hybrid.

.

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4 Key Recommendations for Cloud Integration

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What the cloud means to your organization – including which

deployment models you choose to implement – will help to guide your

requirements for an integration solution.

Integration Required, Yet Concerns Block Cloud Adoption

Just as cloud infrastructure is not particularly useful without software

applications that run on it, cloud applications and platforms are not

very valuable unless they can reuse the critical corporate data that is

typically locked away in various on-premise systems.

Figure 2: In a recent study conducted by Forrester Research, “integration challenges with other

applications” is cited as the second highest barrier to cloud adoption.

Integration Challenges Are Impeding Cloud Adoption

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4 Key Recommendations for Cloud Integration

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For cloud applications and platforms to provide maximum value, they

need to seamlessly integrate and stay synchronized with both on-

premise and other cloud-based applications and data sources. Yet

―integration challenges with other applications‖ is cited as the second

highest barrier to cloud adoption. This should come as no surprise.

In this new environment, IT resources are no longer contained in

private data centers, blurring the integration boundaries for many

cross-functional applications. Choosing the appropriate integration

solution can mean the difference between success and failure to your

cloud initiative. Forty-two percent of organizations are looking to

implement solutions to address on-premise to cloud integration in the

next two years, and integration vendors need to step up to address

this underserved market.

Main Characteristics of Integration for Cloud

As business solutions evolve to embrace cloud computing, it is only

natural that integration solutions must change as well. The added

complexity of these hybrid environments requires significant

integration and coordination between the on-premise and off-premise

applications and data sources. The old approaches to integration

solutions, based on centralized hubs, no longer suffice.

Today’s integration solutions must traverse corporate and geographic

boundaries and be able to adapt to changing business needs. Solutions

that cannot integrate numerous platforms, data sources and

applications will fail. Integration solutions in the cloud must maintain

accurate information and process business transactions across hybrid

environments. Rather than look at each integration project in a silo,

companies must select an integration strategy that will support this

dynamic and varied environment.

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4 Key Recommendations for Cloud Integration

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Elasticity

Some basic tenets of the cloud help to inform how integration

solutions must change. First, the cloud is elastic. If demand for IT

resources increases, the cloud must expand to meet this need. Just as

importantly, when demand wanes, resources should contract in turn.

Elasticity demands an integration solution that can expand and

contract in kind. IT organizations rely on enterprise services buses

(ESBs) for on-premise integration projects for their flexibility and

reliability. ESBs that are lightweight and easily embedded into

applications are best suited to meet these varying demands. For

example, if a retailer’s order management and inventory system needs

to expand to accommodate year-end demand and then contract to a

normal load after the New Year, a traditional centralized application

server cannot easily add capacity and then have it removed. On the

other hand, IT organizations can deploy a lightweight, distributed ESB

to meet the short-term demand and just as easily retire it when

demand levels return to normal.

Recommendation #1: An integration solution that is lightweight

and easily embedded into applications supports the ability to

expand and contract deployments as required.

Ubiquity

Another trait of the cloud is that it is ubiquitous. Access to resources

cannot be restricted by platform or by access device. In the past,

ubiquity meant choosing the most popular industry standard and

complying with it. However, beyond standardization, the cloud puts a

new emphasis on accessibility and availability of infrastructure

resources. Integration solutions used in the cloud must not only

support standard Web services and REST approaches to integration,

but also be freely available as open source. Easily downloaded and

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transparent to users and developers alike, open source integration

solutions ensure that cloud resources are accessible to a wide variety

of existing and new applications and devices through standard and

available interfaces.

Recommendation #2: Support for standard Web services and

REST integration approaches and an open source model makes

resources easily accessible by myriad platforms and devices.

Extensibility

The cloud is extensible as well. Never static, the application and

service offerings of the cloud change and grow over time. Integration

solutions based on a modular architecture that can add, modify or

remove functionality work best in cloud environments. For instance,

some users of solutions in the cloud will require greater access

control, while others need to ensure business continuity.

The ability to meet the divergent needs of different users of cloud

solutions demands an extensible integration infrastructure. Today,

ESBs that are built on the OSGi standard support a modular approach

to integration that is ideal for cloud applications. ESBs built on

standards also can interoperate with future applications and services

as the infrastructure evolves to support the business.

Recommendation #3: Employing a modular architecture allows

organizations to add, modify or remove functionality as

integration requirements and cloud topologies change over time.

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4 Key Recommendations for Cloud Integration

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Security and Reliability

Finally, the cloud must be secure and reliable for businesses to trust

using it for their most critical applications. Today, many businesses

hedge against perceived risk in the cloud by building ―private clouds‖.

These cloud implementations are dedicated to a specific business thus

limiting their exposure to the outside world. Over time, private cloud

applications will link to public clouds, eventually fully migrating once

corporations have confidence that the business gain of interacting with

other companies in the cloud outweighs the risk of participating in this

public forum. The integration solutions that link these cloud

environments will need to maintain security and reliability down to

the individual message level. ESBs based on Web services standards

for security and reliability are an excellent solution for maintaining

mission-critical quality of service.

Recommendation #4: Choosing a solution that supports the

ability to maintain security and reliability of cloud-based

applications down to the individual message level is critical for

organizations to meet customer service level agreements (SLAs).

A Unified Approach to Cloud Integration

Talend Cloud, consisting of rich data management and an ESB designed

for deployment in hybrid environments, delivers an excellent solution

for cloud integration. With greater usage of cloud computing in IT

organizations, there is an increasing demand to integrate applications

and data while preserving the benefits of the cloud, namely elasticity

and affordability ― all while maintaining performance, reliability and

security. Talend Cloud enables enterprises large and small to achieve

these benefits.

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4 Key Recommendations for Cloud Integration

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Talend Cloud provides a unified platform to integrate the data and

applications that support critical business processes spanning hybrid

computing environments. By offering over 450 connectors and

components ― many designed specifically for popular cloud-based and

SaaS applications ― Talend Cloud simplifies the integration of these

business processes.

The unified platform provides a consistent development, deployment,

runtime and monitoring environment allowing application integration

and data management to work in concert. The offering of a common

toolset shortens the time to deployment for integration by eliminating

the need to learn multiple tools and environments. By offering the

products as open source, Talend makes integration more affordable

and accessible to a broad set of users.

Businesses benefit from the greater affordability, accessibility and

ease-of-use of our open source version of Talend Cloud, which reduces

cost and speeds time-to-market for new business solutions. Further,

businesses benefit from the greater productivity and efficiency that

Talend provides through the inclusion of richer tools for development

and operations teams.

What to Look for in a Cloud Integration Solution

Integration projects ― especially those that incorporate a combination

of on-premise, public cloud and private cloud deployments ― come in

all shapes and sizes. The integration platform that you choose needs

to be flexible to accommodate a variety of use cases. If the business

processes and applications you are looking to integrate are mission-

critical to your business, your integration solution also must be

reliable, secure and high performing.

The future of a business is hard to predict. Choose an integration

solution that is extensible to easily adapt to these changes. Integration

solutions should be open, modular and easy-to-use to provide the

greatest return on investment to the organization.

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4 Key Recommendations for Cloud Integration

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1. What does the Cloud mean to my organization?

2. Can my integration solution expand and contract

deployments as required?

3. Can I easily make resources accessible by myriad

platforms and devices in hybrid environments?

4. Can I easily add, modify or remove functionality

as integration requirements and cloud topologies

change over time?

5. Can I maintain security and reliability of cloud-

based applications down to the individual

message level?

And finally, integration projects can be complex. Make sure that your

solution doesn’t require an army of expensive consultants or the

purchase of a stack of technology that you don’t intend to use.

Conclusion – Five Questions to Ask

Forward-thinking organizations select integration solutions that will

support their cloud computing adoption strategy both short and long-

term. How can you do the same? Start by asking yourself these five

questions:

Talend provides the industry’s first open source unified platform for

application integration and data management to address integration of

on-premise, public cloud and private cloud IT infrastructure.

To learn more about integrating hybrid cloud environments with

Talend, please visit talend.com.

Talend White Paper

4 Key Recommendations for Cloud Integration

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i

Cloud Application Integration: 10 Key Trends to Follow, eWeek, 14

September 2011

ii

IDC Predictions 2011: Welcome to the New Mainstream, IDC,

December 2010

iii

Gartner Dataquest Market Trends: Application Infrastructure and

Middleware in Small and Midsize Businesses, 2009-2014, Gartner, Inc.,
February 16 2011