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Topic: Technology Evaluation
Benny Lasiter
says:
You may have taken my quotes out of context, or at least added implied meaning which is not true. Perhaps the wording could have been more clear but seeking confirmation of one's suspicions doesn't exactly lend itself to open consideration of all interpretations.
Hines Real Estate Securities in no way went down the path of implementing SaaS solutions without careful planning and integration for each new vendor's data as they were brought on board. We recognized how many SaaS vendors do not integrate with each other (although this is much less a problem than five years ago when we began) and saw the need to integrate those "silos" of data with each other, as well as with our internal applications. My personal approach was that SaaS presents the same integration challenges everybody has seen before, thus the reference to being back in that situation.
Regarding the "tangled web" of integrations, those were the author's words, not mine -- in Hines' case, it COULD HAVE created a real mess if not managed properly but it did not. In fact, I would choose to refer to our situation as a complex system of integrations -- all very carefully implemented and managed to meet the needs of our organization.
Please do not make the assumption or give the impression to your readers that Hines got itself into a bad situation from which it had to be rescued. In short, we quite successfully used proactive analysis to recognize potential pitfalls to our SaaS-heavy business environment and developed an implementation strategy to build a long-term architecture without actually suffering through learning anything "the hard way".
I was specifically invited to contribute material to the article because of our success, not our failures, and to help make others aware of the POTENTIAL issues they might face in similar projects.
Sincerely,
Benny Lasiter
Business Systems Architect
Hines Real Estate Securities, Inc.
Loraine Lawson
says
in response to Benny Lasiter:
I under, Mr. Lasiter. However, I don't believe I made assumptions or took information out of context, since the article itself put it this way:
"When Hines Interests Ltd. launched its real estate investment trust business, Hines Real Estate Securities Inc., as a complement to its real estate development business, it built the IT infrastructure around a bevy of SaaS products. But the need to exchange data between various hosted applications -- transaction processing, CRM, literature-fulfillment, and expense and vendor payment systems -- created a tangled web of integrations linking SaaS to SaaS and SaaS to on-premises applications."
I can agree that, given the information you've provided here, I wouldn't have used the term "grim warning," although, really, it is a good warning for other companies.
Rhett Glauser
says:
A quote from the same Computerworld article:
Zamil Industrial ITG, a construction products manufacturer in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, had no problems integrating its service-oriented architecture middleware with a service management application from Service-now.com in Solana Beach, Calif. "We implemented our SOA-based Oracle Fusion middleware before we went for Service-now.com," says Ahmed Abdrabalnabi, service planning manager at Zamil. Integrating it with employee information residing in Active Directory and an on-premises human resources application was "as easy as drinking a glass of water." The process took just a few days, he says, but that's because integration requirements were evaluated upfront to make sure Service-now.com was the right fit.
A growing crop of SaaS IT management applications, including Service-now.com, are becoming quite popular with enterprise IT. These are obviously sold directly to IT. No surprises.
Every enterprise IT software deployment requires integration with both SaaS and traditional on-premise applications and IT pros plan for these integrations. It is the vendor's responsibility to make these integrations as easy as possible.
Our customers' expertise, Web services and open APIs of our Net-native SaaS, dozens of existing integrations to the most popular IT applications, and our commitment to customers to develop new integrations at no additional charge make for an efficient SaaS integration experience that is "as easy as drinking a glass of water."
Rhett
Service-now.com
Topic: SaaS
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Really good article. I have been developing SAAS applications for 10 years now and it was easier for customers when they only had to perform the integration with one SAAS vendor. Through the years, as companies have correctly looked at the ROI for most SAAS solution they are now seeking to tie in multiple SAAS products. This is great as long as customer's and SAAS companies remember:
- These integrations are more complex, as noted. If the SAAS companies provide robust APIs or Web Services the problem is somewhat minimized so it is imperative for SAAS providers to keep this in mind.
- SAAS products are simply tools in a company's toolbelt. It is often beneficial to work with companies that have capable services organization that can consult and ensure that the tools are properly integrated into the business processes, even helping the businesses refine and improve their processes as the implementations occur. Of course, it depends on what kind of application you're discussion. For example, my eFax account doesn't require me to spend time with their services team. However, if you were to roll out a more complex system, say a CRM solution, it would be different.
John
http://johnfmoore.wordpress.com