I just read Byron Deeter’s blog about the explosive growth of cloud computing as illustrated in the Bessemer Venture Partners Cloudscape, and how today the cloud IS the software industry, and how it may just save the global economy with its super-active hiring.

Here at Kapow Software, we are seeing the same growth — and we’re hiring, too — but we look at the explosive growth in the cloud a little differently.

The rapid growth of the number of apps in the cloud (and everywhere else) is creating massive integration challenges with devastating effects:

1. Growing numbers of manual inter-application processes suppress growth
2. Growing challenge of getting the data you need to understand and run your business
3. Growing SaaS vendor lock-in due to obstacles to integration
4. Growing delays to serving your customers on mobile devices and other new media

What’s missing from Byron’s excellent overview is the bonding agent, a way to connect all of the apps that businesses and consumers use, whether in the cloud or elsewhere. The world needs cloud integration, a meaningful synthesis of the apps and data in the cloud, a way to find, access, and use relevant information to create value and become more efficient. Without a solution to the cloud integration challenge, the devastation from the cloud explosion will only grow worse.

Just look at this picture. Only a fraction of the apps in the cloud, inside the firewall (on the left), or anywhere else have the same great quality and well-documented APIs as Salesforce.

It’s like the adage that a chain is no stronger than its weakest link: if one app doesn’t have great APIs (like the Salesforce APIs), it almost doesn’t matter if the others do. They all need to work together.

This is why the figure only shows 100% (green line) connectivity to Salesforce for a few other applications; both ends need high-quality APIs for a connection to become green.

The great promise of SOA cannot fix this problem in the cloud, only Kapow Katalyst can. By the unique capability of Katalyst to API-enable any web application as-is, all connections suddenly become green. That’s what I call sudden advantage!

Some may say, “We accept vendor lock-in to solve this problem; therefore, we have no problem. If we run everything on just one platform (like Salesforce) then there are no applications to integrate.” But is that really true?

According to John Engates, the respected CTO of RackSpace, “No One Size Fits All,” and I completely agree. No One Cloud Vendor Fits All! We are not all driving the same model of car or living in the same type of house, and for a reason. In his Five Cloud Predictions for 2012, John predicts that companies will realize the benefits of “mixing and matching” cloud solutions and implementing a combination of public and private cloud and dedicated solutions. He also foresees “the need for more flexibility and interoperability in the Cloud.”

So we absolutely need to solve the integration problem.

This is what we are doing and why we are hiring at Kapow Software.

By: Stefan Andreasen

Cloud Integration is more than just pre-existing connectors and SalesForce integration

As companies move their IT infrastructure and business applications to SaaS and the cloud it creates increasing need “cloud integration”, the ability to integrate data between applications in the hybrid world of internal apps, cloud apps and business partner apps.

Many Cloud Integration companies claim to offer a complete solution for integrating cloud and SaaS apps, but I claim they are all incomplete. Why?

If you check their demos and use-cases you quickly realize they provide a solution that only works if you have access to existing (and documented) web service APIs. And consequently, most of their examples are centered around salesforce.com integration and salesforce.com APIs.

This approach does not apply to the real cloud world – a world that is far from homogenous, but rather a hybrid, fragmented, and distributed world.

A cloud integration solution is only complete if it can integrate all applications in the cloud, whether they have Web Service APIs or not.

Today there are more than 200 million websites/applications on the internet, and many have complex features and data structure behind them. In this more holistic, big picture, only a fraction of these millions of websites are covered by documented APIs, making most traditional cloud integration solutions all but incomplete. The likelihood that your next cloud integration project will not be covered by “standard” connectors is very high, and therefore you need a cloud integration platform that can integrate to any layer in the application stack: database (SQL), web service (SOAP, REST), or through the presentation layer (HTML, AJAX).

Based on the patended Kapow Extraction Browser that leverages any HTML/AJAX application interface as an API if no web services API is present, Kapow Katalyst is the only Cloud Integration platform that has a complete data extraction, data integration, data transformation and data migration solution for your cloud integration challenges.

Proven by more than 500 customers world-wide, Kapow Katalyst is the only cloud integration platform that provides total connectivity and total data delivery in the cloud, in the enterprise and with your business partners.

Are you ready for your next cloud integration project?

By: Stefan Andreasen

“Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin.”
-  Bob Dylan  1963

Fast forward almost 50 years to 2010 and this Dylan verse offers a modern-day perspective on recent developments in the corporate enterprise, as business users set down new demands (expectations) for the access and use of data.

Economic downturns can be painful, but often have a positive effect on companies by forcing clarity of business execution.  Hardened product/service deliverables and timelines suddenly become indisputable for managers and employees.  Expensive IT projects and initiatives previously thought to be valuable to the Company are ‘rudely’ terminated in favor of genuine efficiency demands, with the goal of lowering transactional costs of the Company.  The Lines of Business (LsOB) and IT organizations are given very specific marching orders: ‘Do more with less and do it faster and better than before!’

Are you “Waiting on IT” in an impatient business climate?

‘Clouds’ have gathered in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and the perfect storm for change is imminent.  An Economic Downturn, Cloud Computing, and Social/Mobile media are driving rapid and transformational change in the way the LsOB will consume and distribute information in the modern enterprise to their partners and customers.

The business users’ insatiable need for access to data in all of its forms and from as many sources has created enormous friction for IT.    As the traditional gate-keeper of corporate data, IT’s role is to provide the means to make data-delivery easier for the business with integrated data being an expectation of the business user.

So why has data integration in the enterprise fallen so far behind in recent years?  In Clay Christiansen’s book “The Innovator’s Dilemma” there is a passage on new product development in the construction industry and the use of older machines prior to a disruptive innovation.  The excavator specifically triggered an analogy for me, as it relates to the current state of data integration in the enterprise.

The excavator is a massive piece of machinery to acquire, operate and maintain.  It requires highly-skilled specialists to run with the primary function of moving massive amounts of earth, in bulk.

As you can see in the graphic, the excavator approach to data integration (purple area) worked well, keeping pace with the distribution of data up until the late 90’s.  From there, the explosion of data from web apps commenced (red triangle) and has continued to accelerate year after year.   The data requirements of the business user changed, and as a result, IT has been overrun with rapidly expanding data demands as new data sources are discovered on what seems like a daily occurrence.  Using traditional, excavator-like machinery for these modern data integration projects has proven to be just too expensive and cumbersome.

In fairness to IT, the use of an excavator to address these dynamic integration projects was (and still is) an unfair disadvantage for IT.   Someone needed to invent the modern data integration equivalent of the BOBCAT, an agile, industrial strength, versatile, data integration platform that is inexpensive to operate and maintain; that can be quickly deployed for on-demand integration needs and used for the continuous progression of enterprise-extensible application lifecycles.

Today, Kapow introduces the Kapow Extraction Browser TM, the first and only web browser purpose built to extract, transform, integrate and migrate data from apps in the enterprise, on the web, and in the cloud.  Data is extracted from any layer in the application stack:  database, app logic and/or presentation layer.

Kapow KatalystTM – Browser-based data integration – a pragmatic new approach to data integration – No APIs required – No dependencies

The emergence of the browser as the defacto standard for data viewing has defined the linkage for business users to their data.  Brisk, mobile adoption and social media amplification are driving new data demands to the forefront of importance for the LsOB as the corporate enterprise ecosystem expands.   IT must begin to anticipate and adapt to these powerful business trends.

Business Users are fast-tracking the extensibility of the corporate enterprise by surfacing new applications for delivery on newer and less encumbered devices.  They will need assistance in dealing with these very real, dynamic and complex data movements. The opportunity for IT to step up and bridge this modern integration chasm for the LsOB has arrived.  Browser Integrated Data is the new road traveled – but get out of the way…

“…If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin.”

By: John Yapaola

Please tune in to hear Stefan and Jim Kobielus on Dana Gardner’s Briefings Direct Podcast, ”Web data services extend data access and distribution beyond the RDB-BI straitjacket”.  Dana moderates an intriguing discussion on making the most of Web Data Services for Business Intelligence, focusing on web data volume, relevancy and timeliness, as well as access, monetization, enablement, governance, security, and the unification and converging of structured and unstructured data.  And in looking towards the future, Jim and Stefan weigh in on the impact of cloud computing on Web Data Service tools.

Jim is a senior analyst at Forrester Research, and an expert on data warehousing, advanced analytics, and business intelligence.

Enjoy the Podcast!