best practices to operationalize an integration strategy for an isv
DESCRIPTION
Analysts frequently cite integration as the #1 obstacle faced by Cloud and SaaS providers, as buyers are no longer willing to bear the burden of the extensive development resources required to integrate to your application. Successful ISV integration strategies require collaboration across the organization from sales to support, to fully understand customer requirements and manage expectations.TRANSCRIPT
Best Practices to
Operationalize an Integration
Strategy for an ISV
Rick Nucci
CTO, Dell Boomi
Amelia Ross
Product Manager, Aprimo
www.DellintheClouds.com
www.Dell.com/Cloud
@Boomi
Agenda
• Introduction
• About Dell Boomi
• The Evolution of Integration
• Best Practices for SaaS ISV
• ISV Case Studies
Introduction SaaS Integration Priority
Concerns about Cloud Infrastructure
Source Saugatuck Technology, Inc. 2008/2009 Global SaaS User Study, n=1788
4
0.0% 5.0% 10.0% 15.0% 20.0% 25.0% 30.0% 35.0% 40.0% 45.0%
Data Security & Privacy Concerns
Integrating SaaS with Existing Enterprise Applications
Ability to Customize Solution to Unique Business Requirements
Integrating SaaS with Existing Enterprise Data Structure
Data Transaction Integrity Concerns
Ensuring System Performance Meets or Exceeds SLAs
ROI of SaaS not yet Verified
Availability of Enterprise-Level Technical Support and Maintenance
Modifying Existing IT Management and Sourcing Practices for SaaS
Viability of SaaS Vendors
Integrating SaaS Data & Applications with Other SaaS Applications
Percentage of Respondents Selecting Each
When Integration Impacts You
• During your sales cycle
–According to our SaaS ISV partners, 35-65% of
deals
• During implementation
–Custom coded integrations typically the
longest phase of the implementation
• During renewals
–Silo’d SaaS deployments cited as top reason
for cancellation
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About Boomi The Integration Cloud™ Company
About Dell Boomi
• Acquired by Dell, November 2010
• Industry’s first & leading Integration Cloud
• 500+ Clients Globally
• 70+ ISV and SI partners
• Offices in Philadelphia and San Francisco
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Social Networks
PaaS Apps Cloud Services
SaaS Apps
9 Confidential 6/7/2011
The Evolution of Integration From closed systems to self-service
Circa 1990’s
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Application Integration Spaghetti
Roots of Integration Complexity
• Closed systems + vendor priorities = API
Optional
• Just write to the database!
• Application customization disconnected from
API
• Wildly disparate integration standards, invocation
models, programming styles
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Today – SaaS Connectivity
• Closed systems = No traction
• API not optional
• There is no database!
• Multi-tenancy architecture forces
customizations to manifest in API
• We at least agree on a few things
–HTTPS, SOAP/WSDL, REST/WADL
12
Today – Big Mentality Shift
• Who owns the integration problem?
• SaaS ISV – must solve during sales cycle
• Department purchasing SaaS: “I love your
solution, show me how it connects to X”
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Phase II — Operationalize
Phase I — Your API Best Practices for ISVs The SaaS API blueprint & strategies for scale.
Phase I – Your API
Key Success Factors
• Your API is part of your product
– Owned by product management
– Integrated into SDLC processes
• Don’t charge extra for your API
– “Oh, you wanted outlets for your electricity?”
– Free, but metered
• Think self-service
– Free, open access to API and documentation as part of product
evaluation
– Your customers will come up with smarter uses of your API than you will
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Phase II — Operationalize
Phase I — Your API Best Practices for ISVs The SaaS API blueprint & strategies for scale.
Phase II – Operationalize
• Strategy – Patterns of re-use will emerge across customer implementations
› Pre-build and package popular integrations
– Leverage platform vs. custom code for all other integrations
– If you are multi-tenant, your integration must be too!
• People – All departments play role in integration
› Sales: tell the “integration story”
› Dev: Connector Development
› Services: custom integration development
› Product: packaged integration
› Support: integration monitoring and support
› SI Ecosystem: augment/own integration delivery and 3rd party application expertise
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Copyright © 2011 by Teradata Corporation
Closed loop marketing via cloud integration
Copyright © 2011 by Teradata Corporation
The challenge
• Integration is critical to clients’ (marketing) success to close the revenue reporting loop on activities
• Sales and Marketing use separate systems and the cost to re-train and support a new sales tool is often too costly
• Clients frequently request integration to other SaaS apps and legacy systems that cannot be retired
• Custom coding integration would be costly and cumbersome for many SaaS clients
• Integrating systems decreases time-to-value, a critical piece to launching our new SaaS platform
Copyright © 2011 by Teradata Corporation
Choosing a cloud integration solution
Aprimo SaaS Customers often look for:
• SaaS-based integration platform
• Cost-effective pricing model
• Partnership among the ISVs
• Flexible, robust, and easy to work with (i.e. visual drag and drop)
• No effort required - Investment by Dell Boomi in the Aprimo connector
Copyright © 2011 by Teradata Corporation
Case Study: Huddle
Copyright © 2011 by Teradata Corporation
About Huddle
• Founded in 2006 with headquarters in London and offices in San Francisco
• Huddle is a cloud-based application that enables collaboration among workers
• With Huddle, you can manage projects, share files, and collaborate internally or externally
• Simply put, if Sharepoint were built today, they would have built Huddle
Customers:
Copyright © 2011 by Teradata Corporation
Business Challenges
• Marketing and Sales use different applications
• Difficulty in distinguishing between prospects and leads
• Inability to “close the loop” and understand the effectiveness of Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL)
• Needed a way to enhance Aprimo Marketing Studio On-Demand via advanced business logic
Copyright © 2011 by Teradata Corporation
How did we do it?
Phase 1 objective was to configure the base integration provided by Aprimo and Dell Boomi
• Received a set of 10 pre-built processes for Salesforce.com and Aprimo Marketing Studio On-Demand
• Added custom fields and additional business logic to the processes
Phase 2 involved enhancing the solution through writing additional processes
Post-Go Live, Huddle and Aprimo will collaborate to write new processes as the business continues to evolve
Copyright © 2011 by Teradata Corporation
Boomi Architecture Drawing
Copyright © 2011 by Teradata Corporation
What were the results?
• Ability to Track Revenue as a function of Lead Source
• Analysis of results supported shifting investment from Pay Per Click to Search Engine Optimization
• Quantitatively tell Sales how “hot” a lead is via a Lead Score
• Can constantly tweak the scoring model based on real-time feedback from sales team
• Creation of “Interesting Moments” field based on web analytics (ex: Person has been on website 6 times in the last week, etc.)
Copyright © 2011 by Teradata Corporation
Actionable Business Information
• Lead Source vs. Closed Opportunities
• Breakdown of Revenue by Lead Source
* Note: Actual financial data has been replaced with example data
Copyright © 2011 by Teradata Corporation
Boomi & Aprimo Partnership success
• 34% of all SaaS deals are sold with integration
• 100% customer satisfaction with Dell Boomi integration - every live customer has been completely satisfied with the Dell Boomi integration with no rework or redesign needed
• Deals sold with integration increased by over 120% year over year
• Partnership results in a key differentiator during the sales process and often removes sales objections around integration
• Strong customer care support and cooperation between Aprimo and Dell Boomi
Copyright © 2011 by Teradata Corporation
Lessons learned
1. Include integration in phase 1 of the SaaS implementation
2. Custom coding integration is not scalable in SaaS model
3. Bring customers’ IT team into the sales process early when integration is involved
4. By using pre-built integration, team was able to focus effort on business process analysis and testing (end user satisfaction) - not design and coding
5. Strong customer ownership early of the technical solution avoided many future satisfaction issues during handoff
6. Accurate documentation of processes enabled resolution of production issues
Copyright © 2011 by Teradata Corporation
Any questions?
Thank you!
Amelia Ross
Rick Nucci
Questions?
31 Confidential 6/7/2011