Joe McKendrick, ebizQ's SOA in Action Blogger, is a nationally published author and consultant
with deep knowledge and insights regarding trends and developments in
the technology industry. He is a contributing editor to a number of
national and international publications and Websites including
Database Trends & Applications, ZDNet, and Webservices.Org. He also
serves as analyst for Evans Data Corp., and is lead analyst for Evans'
Web services and enterprise development management issues surveys.
SOA in Action Blog
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« Airline Turns to a 'Bus' for Real-Time Messaging | Main | The SOA-Virtualization Connection: Is This a Good Thing? » May 03, 2007SaaS is Skyrocketing; But Needs SOA New data out of Saugatuck Research finds Software as a Service (SaaS) is gaining traction in today's enterprises. As reported in Network World, more than a quarter of companies are using at least one SaaS application, up from 11% at the beginning of 2006, the consultancy reports. Saugatuck goes on to predict that SaaS adoption will grow to 47% by the end of this year, and by 2010 it will reach at least 65% worldwide. If Saugatuck is right, that means that SaaS adoption will double over the next few months, from 25% to 47%. This truly makes 2007 the year of SaaS. The consultancy goes on to observe that integration with in-house software will likely require SOA, the report states. “SaaS is going to complicate and hybridize user IT and business operational environments faster, and to a greater degree, than most user and vendor executives understand at this point,” Saugatuck writes. “The vast majority of user IT departments will simply not have the resources to handle the influx of enterprise-level SaaS” expected to occur over the next seven years. How complex can SaaS-in-house integration get? Chip Vanek, director of corporate and CRM applications for Magma Design Automation, recently led an ebizQ.net Webinar, discussing the integration challenges his company had to address as it moved to SaaS-based services. Magma, supplier of computer-aided design, relies on CRM functionality delivered as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) from Salesforce. com to track orders and maintain customer satisfaction levels. At Magma, SaaS-based applications are highly integrated with onsite ERP applications to manage the company’s buy, sell, and make processes. ‘ SAP is our back- end system of record,’ Vanek explained. Vanek said that his company needed to do quite a bit of integration work to mesh data coming from the Salesforce.com system into the SAP system. ‘We have an issue where we need to take the information that we have in Salesforce and pull it back into our back-end system,’ he explained. For example, in the company’s ‘buy’ process, ‘we have hundreds of people around the world that are creating purchase requisitions. We have to make sure that we have them properly approved. We needed a bi-directional synchronization between the two systems.’ Posted by joemckendrick in SOA | Digg This | Add to del.icio.us Trackback Pings TrackBack URL for this entry:
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