April 2010

Welcome to the Hubspan newsletter – Your connection to trends and happenings in the business integration market, Hubspan customer stories and expert views. For more information on any of these articles or to learn more about Hubspan, please email info@hubspan.com 

IN THIS ISSUE

Feature Story:  Why Traditional EDI is not Enough: the Business Integration Imperative Webinar

Expert Q&A:  As-A-Service with Chief Architect Max Coburn

Event Spotlight:  IBM IMPACT 2010

News & Views:  Articles on Cloud Trends and the Evolving Integration Market

Feature Story:   Why Traditional EDI is not Enough: the Business Integration Imperative Webinar

On April 27^th, join IT leader Yogee Katbamna from Cisco Consumer Products and leading EDI and integration expert Ken Vollmer, Principal Analyst with Forrester Research, Inc, for a complementary webinar on why legacy EDI is not enough and how and why your organization should move to comprehensive business integration.

While EDI has been around for decades, many organizations are struggling to meet business requirements with legacy EDI standards and solutions.  Learn why traditional EDI transactions are no longer fulfilling the need for real-time business-to-business integration and how companies, like Cisco, are turning to cloud-based integration solutions to solve the EDI challenge.

Date: Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Time: 10:00 a.m. PT / 1:00 p.m. ET

Registration: http://www.hubspan.com/edi-webinar-registration/

Everyone who attends the webinar will be entered in a drawing to win a new Flip HD video camcorder! The Flip, a Cisco product, offers stunningly crisp, HD-quality video in a sleek, simple camcorder that’s designable. (See rules and regulations)

Expert Q & A:   As-A-Service Chief Architect Max Coburn

Max Coburn is Hubspan’s Chief Architect and a product strategist for Hubspan Inc, a leading provider of cloud-based business integration solutions. Max has over 20 years of software development and system architecting experience, and has architected much of the company’s proprietary integration application. Hubspan Connections spoke with Max about how to make sense of the complex As-A-Service Ecosystem.

Connections: What are the different as-a-Service offerings available today?

Max: Currently there are four primary categories that describe the current as-a-Service landscape.

IaaS – Has two variants:

Infrastructure as a Service – Providing externally hosted commodity hardware and software infrastructures.  Customers are typically granted direct access to hosted systems for configuration and management tasks.

Integration as a Service – providing connectivity and basic message brokering services between applications and businesses.

BaaS/BPaaS – Business Process as a Service; These services enable sophisticated choreographies, business rule enforcement, exception management and message exchange governance. Can be thought of as an extension of IaaS. 

SaaS – Again there are two variants

Software as a Service API – In this case an API service is exposed typically as a SOAP or Rest interface.  Other services and applications can then access this API for real-time information retrieval i.e. monetary conversion rate queries.

Software as a Service Application – This usually takes the form of a rich UI centric application that provides vertical solutions for a user community.  SaleForce CRM application is a good example of a SaaS application.

PaaS– Platform as a Service; Provides a virtual application development and deployment environment.   Usually are accompanied with strong design tools as well as some scripting capabilities.  Application lifecycle management (test/production) is a core component of these solutions.

Connections: What are the benefits of as-a-Service?

Max: There are many as-a-service advantages; I would consider the following to be the most persuasive.

1)  Cost savings – pay-as-you-go pricing allows companies to limit their expenditures to only those services that are utilized.

2)  Fault tolerant production environments – Allows companies to leverage fully built out production environments.  This is especially valuable for small companies where setting up and managing production processing environment can be cost prohibitive.

3)  Allows for quick deployment – The services environment is typically already provisioned and is ready for solutions deployment.

4)  Allows for dynamic scaling of capacity – As services demand grows the application can be easily scaled to achieve a best fit.

5)  Can leverage specialized expertise – There are many could services that specialize in one aspect of conducting business i.e. travel arrangements, procurement, CRM.  For most companies these are not core competencies.  Interfacing with cloud services allows companies to leverage this specialization.

Connections: What should be considered before jumping into as-a-Service solutions?

Max: Companies have an opportunity to really expand their capabilities in a cost effective way by leveraging as-a-Service solutions.  However there are also risks when moving core processing outside of your companies direct control.  I would look out for the following when evaluating as-a-Service solutions.

Security is always the top of the list – The following is a good starting point for determining if a cloud service meets your company’s security standards.

How do they authenticate users and real-time transactions?

How is my company’s data segregated from other customers?

How is my company’s data secured within their application?  If encrypted, what key management strategies are employed?

What is their network topology?  Are they consistent with best practice tiered networking?

What access controls are used to enforce on premise security?

Do they have a comprehensive disaster recovery plan in place?

Is the provider reputable?

Is the prospective cloud vender solvent? How large is their customer base? Do they have customer references?  How long have they been in business?

Does the pricing model fit’s your business?

Does the solution fit your problem and your legacy infrastructure?

Be wary if an as-a-Service solution requires a large re-vamp of your infrastructure.  As-a-Service offering should extend your companies capabilities not disrupt them.

Event Spotlight: IMPACT 2010

Hubspan is pulling out all the stops at this year’s IBM IMPACT show, May 2-7 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, Las Vegas. As a Silver Sponsor, Hubspan will have a prominent position in the Solution Center Expo and has several speaking sessions you can attend.  Sessions include: 

• SOA & Cloud Computing: Using both to improve customer loyalty and business growth
• 10 IT & Business Benefits of B2B Integration in the Cloud
• Top Questions Every CIO Should Ask of Cloud Vendors About Cloud Security

Come visit Hubspan in the Solution Center and enter to win a deluxe freestanding gas barbecue grill from Whirlpool’s KitchenAid line

Click for more info: http://www.hubspan.com/community/events/

News & Views

ThinkStrategies
The Correlation Between College Basketball & Cloud Computing  Jeff Kaplan makes an interesting connection between the recent NCAA college basketball championship game between Duke and Butler and this new generation of small but quickly growing Software-as-a-Service and cloud computing companies are going against established vendors to win customers’ rapidly changing needs and expectations.

AlwaysOn
Announcing the OnDemand 100: Hubspan is recognized as a Top 100 OnDemand Private Company in the category of On-Demand Software and Business Management Applications.

eBizQ
SOA and Cloud Computing: A Match Made in Heaven  A feature article authored by HubspanCEO Trisha Gross and IBM Vice President Steven Worrall on how Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Cloud Computing are symbiotic and work together to provide companies with a more streamlined, cost effective and impactful IT infrastructure.

Limited Time Offer

Advanced EDI in the Cloud
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Register to receive information on our Advanced EDI solution and promotion and as a thank you, you’ll receive a complementary white paper on “Why Legacy EDI is Not Enough”.
Now through June 30, 2010, you receive 25% off any EDI solution
Register here and receive your free white paper!