MetraTech, the leading provider of agreements-based billing and compensation solutions, and Scribe, a global data integration provider, has announced that the two companies are collaborating to connect the Metanga cloud billing application to Microsoft Dynamics CRM and other business applications. This technology partnership delivers faster time to revenue at a fraction of the cost of traditional integration solutions for independent software vendors (ISVs) that create and support cloud-based services.

Using Scribe Online, customers can integrate customer and transactional data between Metanga, MetraTech's multi-tenant, cloud-based billing application, and other online and on-premise business applications. The Scribe Online platform simplifies the implementation and maintenance of integration solutions, and like Metanga, it is built on the Windows Azure platform. Its unique collaborative user experience and ability to support global integrations make it an ideal solution for integrating a broad range of applications quickly and easily.

Since Boomi was acquired and abducted by Dell last year, the integration marketplace has started to heat back up. A year ago it seemed that with Cast Iron Systems (acquired by IBM) and Boomi dominating, there was hardly any room for other players.

This year's theme of social media and cloud company acquisition extravaganza leaves me wondering who will likely be the next player to be acquired. 

Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to catch up with the SnapLogic team at SIIA/OpSource's All About The Cloud event in San Francisco. What I really like about SnapLogic is their visual connection platform, which allows you to use what they term "Snaps" to visually connect applications together. Snaps are pre-fabricated connections leveraging app APIs, so no deep technical knowledge is needed to make two apps talk, making it really easy to keep the business pathways flowing.

Integration Service Provides Orchestration Across Enterprise and Cloud, Solves Emerging "Cloud Silo" Problem

MuleSoft, the provider of web middleware built on leading open source projects Mule ESB and Apache Tomcat, has announced a private beta program for a new integration platform as a service (iPaaS) called Mule iON. Mule iON enables developers and application teams to integrate and orchestrate applications and services seamlessly across the enterprise and cloud. It also provides IT operations with the same runtime visibility and control they would expect from an on-premise integration platform, all without the need to install or manage middleware or hardware infrastructure.

Informatica Corporation, the world's number one independent leader in data integration software, today launched Informatica Cloud Express, the first cloud data integration service with usage-based pricing.

Informatica Cloud Express pricing will start at only $99 US per month, opening the door for organizations of all sizes to leverage the industry-leading data integration capabilities of Informatica Cloud – voted the Best Integration Application of 2009 and 2008 by salesforce.com customers on AppExchange. Delivered as a true multi-tenant cloud service, Informatica Cloud Express will empower Salesforce administrators and operations staff to create, schedule and automate bi-directional cloud-to-on premise integration tasks without coding and without requiring a hardware appliance.

Dell today announced it has agreed to acquire Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) integration leader Boomi to help businesses reap the full value of cloud computing. Powered by its revolutionary AtomSphere technology, Boomi offers the industry’s only pure SaaS application integration platform that takes the cost and complexity out of integrating applications by allowing easy transfer of data between cloud-based and on-premise applications with no appliances, no software and no coding required.

Boomi Industry Leadership

Headquartered in Berwyn, Pa., Boomi’s technology solutions are widely used with the world’s leading cloud-based applications, including Salesforce CRM, as well as marketing, financial, human resources, content management and service-desk management.

Informatica Corporation the world’s number one independent provider of enterprise data integration software, today announced the general availability of the Informatica Cloud Summer 2010 release. The new release significantly broadens the company’s award winning data integration Cloud Services with pre-packaged plug-ins that enable data quality and business-to-business (B2B) data transformation in the cloud.

With Informatica Cloud Summer 2010, customers and partners can also build and share custom plug-ins through the Informatica Marketplace and take advantage of pre-packaged connectivity for applications such as Salesforce, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, Xactly, Right 90, Big Machines and numerous others.

Bay & Bay Transportation chose a cloud-based CRM application -- Salesforce.com -- for the reasons you might expect.

“It was so easy for us to get up and running at a very reasonable cost with no real risk on our side,” said Rob Adams, CIO at the Rosemount, Minn.-based dry freight shipping company.

David Inbar, Pervasive Software's director of Worldwide Marketing for Integration and International Channels, explains the most overlooked problem when it comes to SaaS integration, as well as what's new for Pervasive, in this interview with IT Business Edge's Loraine Lawson.

Lawson: Pervasive started out as an on-premise solution, correct?
Inbar: That’s correct. The roots of the original integration company, Data Junction, were actually on-premise dealing primarily with legacy data - mainframe, COBOL, all those lovely things with copy books that matched or didn’t match and so on. The vision then was all this machine-readable data out there, it’s really tough for humans to understand it and be able to quickly move it around into different formats. We’ve been through several iterations since then. We’re probably into our fourth re-architecting. As we’ve grown, the number of connectors moved from desktop to client server, from client server to server-based distributed, to cloud-based.

Lawson: Where are you seeing the most growth?
Inbar: Certainly I would say in terms of growth point, integration tends to go where systems are changing or expanding. So it’s very natural for a company like us to see growth around SaaS in particular.

Cast Iron Systems, Cloud Computing Integration Company, on Monday announced that the Cast Iron Integration Solution has been selected as a finalist for the prestigious Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) CODiE Awards in the Best Application Integration Solution category. SIIA members will vote to decide the winner in this category, which will be announced in May.

"This recognition by the SIIA further validates our success in the marketplace," said Ken Comee, CEO of Cast Iron Systems. "Cast Iron first established itself as the leading cloud integration company with our success in rapidly solving integration problems for IT. Since then, we've also become the product of choice of the industry's mega-brands. Customers and major channel partners alike credit the speed, simplicity, and flexibility of our integration products for their decision to select Cast Iron."