Data Integration as a Service Use Cases and Solutions
The rapid adoption of cloud applications, platforms, and infrastructure has resulted in more fragmented data and an increased need to integrate data “in the cloud” with data in on-premise applications and databases. Line of business managers and SaaS administrators need rapid time to value and self service. Meanwhile, the IT organization is tasked with avoiding costly data silos eliminating untrustworthy point solutions.
The right approach to cloud data integration can play a key role in aligning business users with IT. Some common uses cases for cloud data integration include:
Data Migration
As your organization modernizes its IT infrastructure by moving off of or rationalizing legacy on-premise applications, you need to have confidence that you can easily and securely migrate your data to and from the cloud. Similarly, if your company or department has merged with another, or you’ve acquired a new entity, you need to migrate and merge data to deliver timely, relevant and trustworthday data quickly.
Data Synchronization
As more front office applications (e.g., CRM) are deployed in the cloud, your organization needs to synchronize the data within them with back office applications (e.g., ERP). This synchronization is critical to ensuring timely, relevant, and trustworthy information is delivered throughout your enterprise. Customer master synchronization is also a major business initiative focused on delivering a single view of your company's customer data.
Speaking of a single view the customer—does your sales team need to be able to see Order details directly within their Accounts and Opportunities? And what about Cases, Leads, Campaigns, and Custom Objects? With more organizations adopting Salesforce CRM, the demand for self-service cloud-based data integration that can be managed by nontechnical business users is also growing.
Data Replication
The demand for "set and forget" data integration as a service is a growing use case in enterprise organizations that are required to keep an on-premise copy of all cloud-based data for compliance, disaster recovery, or reporting purposes. Looking to integrate Salesforce data with your enterprise data warehouse? Trying to get more out of your business intelligence tools?
Data Quality
While most organizations care about the quality of their data, CRM systems have been an inherent weak link in overall data quality partially due to manual data entry and the wide variety of data import sources, formats and content. Without a well run data quality program, duplicate, incomplete and inconsistent data can quickly find its way into your core operational systems, which are the lifeblood of your business.
To gain full value from your enterprise data—whether it resides in the cloud or on premise—your organization must be able to access, integrate, and trust them. You need a comprehensive, unified, open, and economical cloud data integration solution.
The Informatica Cloud can help.