“Without the seamless and automatic transfer of information, an organization can quickly face delays and errors throughout key processes — making it difficult for companies to scale and grow efficiently.â€
An insightful conversation with Jan Arendtsz, CEO, Celigo, about the evolution of cloud-based applications, pros and cons of SaaS, addressing the challenges with integration between systems, making life easier with SmartConnectors, and more!
How have you seen the cloud-based application landscape evolve over the last few years?
SaaS applications in the workplace really began to take hold a little over a decade ago. As better tools and applications become available to consumers, user expectations from business applications began shifting. With the consumerization of the enterprise, users expect today’s business applications to be just as easy to purchase, implement, and start using – without training – as any consumer application.
This also means that business applications are no longer driven or owned by IT, but rather by the line of business users who can choose best of breed tools based on how effectively the application solves their problems. And because these apps are so easy to develop and implement, we have seen an explosion in the number of applications designed to solve every single pain point imaginable in any organization.
SaaS has caused an explosion of investments by functional leaders in stand-alone solutions, for multiple functional challenges, without involving IT. This has led to large, messy tech stacks at a functional level, and in many cases, duplication or gaps in functionality. What is your take on the pros and cons of SaaS for every conceivable functional business need?
The pros, as mentioned before, is that any user today can choose the best tool that solves a specific problem, resulting in a set of various applications leading to incredibly agile and adaptable organizations. The problem, however, is that applications are added to address specific pain points, and are rarely approached holistically, within the context of the business processes of an entire organization.
They were not built to talk to each other, and therefore, become standalone data silos, with data manually transferred between applications, collected in spreadsheets, emailed across the organization, etc. Individuals don’t have the visibility into the information they need to do their job effectively. Without the seamless and automatic transfer of information, an organization can quickly face delays and errors throughout key processes – making it difficult for companies to scale and grow efficiently.
In the above context, integration is a big opportunity in the cloud-based SaaS world, and iPaaS is a stand-alone category, thanks to that. What are the practical challenges companies face with integration between systems?
Integration has been around for a long time. But typically, integration takes a few different flavors:
i. You can build it yourself or hire a consultant. This typically requires technical staff who are not close to the problem at hand doing dedicated development work. This also means you are in the business of maintaining integrations, owning data governance, delivery guarantees, and when an endpoint application is updated, you have to update it yourself.
ii.You can leverage native integrations or point-to-point connectors. However, native integrations typically solve very specific use cases and are not built to address broader integration needs. This is where an iPaaS (integration Platform-as-a-Service) helps standardize how applications are added to an organization. This becomes the “central station†in which data is connected in an organization. Since it is a platform that focuses on integration, significant capabilities are available to make it easier to integrate applications across multiple business processes.
How does iPaas 2.0 work? What level of in-house technical proficiency does a company need to use an advanced iPaas solution?
Integration solutions are generally one generation behind the applications they were designed to connect. Most of today’s iPaaS vendors are designed for IT professionals and developers and were built at a time when IT owned business applications. But as decisions on business applications are increasingly made by lines of business users, integration solutions need to move in that direction as well.
Who should lead system integration outcomes – the technical head or the functional head who uses the software? What are the best practices you advise companies to follow when it comes to integrating disparate systems to drive competitive advantage?
Integration strategies should be federated within an organization. Certain processes will require strict, streamlined control that is led by a technical team. Other processes, however, should be flexible without requiring technical support. So, the best practice is to have an integration platform that simultaneously supports all these use cases for an organization.
Tell us more about SmartConnectors – who needs them and how do they make life easier?
SmartConnectors are managed, pre-built integration apps licensed independently and built on an iPaaS. These are bundled workflows that have already been built to quickly get integrations up and running. Because they are licensed as SaaS apps, the user benefits from continuous improvements that are automatically available, and if an endpoint changes, the integration provider is responsible for ensuring the continuity of services. And because it is built on an iPaaS, SmartConnectors are robust and flexible to accommodate changes to individual processes and spikes in transaction volumes.
For example, a SmartConnector can automate the lead to cash processes so that the sales and finance team have the information they need while using the tools they want to use to do their jobs. And because it is built on iPaaS, the integration can easily be customized or expanded to fit the very specific customizations.
What trends are you tracking in the Cloud-based SaaS space as we head into 2020?
As iPaaS is the fastest-growing segment of the enterprise software market, we will be closely tracking the consumerization of iPaaS towards the next-generation iPaaS 2.0.
Thank you for such an insightful conversation, Jan. We hope to speak with you again, soon!
About Jan Arendtsz:
Jan ArendtszOpens a new window is a veteran of the software industry with more than 20 years of experience in development, product management, client services, and sales roles. He founded Celigo in 2006 with the goal of simplifying the integration of cloud-based applications. He is responsible for overseeing all company operations. Jan was a Director of Technical Services at NetSuite, where he led a team that provided technical solutions within the professional services group. He also worked as a Product Manager at NetSuite, launching the company’s integration platform.
Before NetSuite, Jan worked for Cambridge Technology Partners, where he implemented complex solutions for a multitude of customers ranging from Internet startups to Fortune 500 companies. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin.
About Celigo:
CeligoOpens a new window is pioneering the future of cloud-based application integration. Celigo’s integrator.io platform is an easy-to-use, next-generation integration Platform-as-a-Service (iPaaS) that enables companies to integrate almost anything to anything. It powers Celigo’s SmartConnectorsOpens a new window : pre-built, full-featured, highly customizable integrations between popular cloud applications such as NetSuite, Salesforce, Shopify, Zendesk, Jira, and more. Headquartered in San Mateo, California, Celigo has over 180 employees worldwide.