Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Ben Kepes is a content adviser for the CloudBeat 2012 conference.

My background and entry into the technology industry came from my experience wrangling tech for a number of different small and mid-sized businesses. I’ve seen first hand just how much work is involved in tailoring discrete solutions into something that actually meets the specific needs of the business. This is even more difficult for resource constrained small businesses that lack the cash and IT skills of enterprise.

As we move into the cloud-dominated world, the issue of integration is made more prominent as enterprises realize just how many different systems are being used throughout their organizations. While one of the best things about cloud is the widespread democratization of technology, this is also one of the most problematic areas. All of a sudden, managers and IT staff are scratching their heads about how to reconcile the issues created by business units having to interact with many software solutions from a ton of different vendors.

It’s for this reason that when Paul Miller and I started talking about content for the upcoming CloudBeat conference, that integration and the cloud was one of the areas we wanted to focus on. But my take on integration is even wider than simply “stitching together a few different solutions”.

True application integration, in its purest sense, is one angle that needs to be seriously analyzed. There are many companies trying to solve this conundrum — from working out how to integrate the data and processes of businesses using both QuickBooks and Salesforce to pre-packaging “bundles” of software for specific verticals and selling them as a package. Companies like SnapLogic, Dell Boomi, IBM Cast Iron, and others are trying to work on this problem set.

But there are other areas that integration come into play — services like Tibco’s Tibbr and Salesforce’s Chatter are attempting to build a social fabric across an organization that, at least with a broader definition, constitutes a sort of integration. They bring together discrete sets of data and workflow and try and deliver sense out of them all.

Other solutions like WalkMe aim to resolve the cognitive dissonance that comes from too much exposure to too many different solutions. WalkMe has taken the approach of enabling online self-service to overcome some of what integration aims to solve — the user experience problems caused by discrete packets of software.

And then there is a further discussion to be had, that of whether lightweight integrations, a sort of “minimum viable product” approach to software integration, is sufficient in this loosely couple modern world or whether the traditional enterprise approach with big and heavy integration solutions, data warehousing and ETL is still required — does the proliferation of APIs solve this issue?

I’m looking forward to moderating an integration session at CloudBeat where I’ll be talking with panelists including SnapLogic CTO Chris Wagner and Informatica SVP Juan Carlos Soto. The overarching theme for the integration track is to explore the real need for consistent workflows, integration tools, common data formats, and other solutions to help tie a multitude of disparate systems together.

In my session, we’ll be focusing strongly on lightweight cloud integration versus enterprise-grade and asking whether companies really need all the bells and whistles that come with traditional integration solutions, like ESBs, ETL, or EAI tools. Or are today’s exponentially growing library of APIs, paired with more affordable SaaS-based integration tools, enough to get the job done well?

It’s going to be a fun and informative session — why don’t you join us?

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, investor, commentator, and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity, and agility, all enabled by the cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users. You can follow Ben on Twitter.

System integration concept image via alphaspirit/Shutterstock

Business-focused social network Yammer is making good on its promise to all aspects of work software more social. Today the startup announced a slew of new features, including a new Universal Search tool, Premium Yammer Groups, more advanced content sharing options, and lots of new integration with third-party enterprise software platforms.

For those who aren’t familiar with the service, Yammer provides companies with their own private social network that employees use to quickly communicate and update their activity throughout the day. (Disclosure: VentureBeat writers use Yammer to communicate on the job.) A company’s Yammer network is closed off from public view and is only accessible to people who have a company email address. More than 200,000 businesses are now using Yammer’s social service, including 7-Eleven, Red Robin, Ford, General Electric, Shell, and Penn State University.

Yammer, which now has five million corporate users, said the new features and functionality its rolling out for spring will help the company reach its goal of hitting 8 to 10 million corporate users by the end of 2012. Yammer’s platform looks a lot like Facebook’s open graph, except optimized for a professional business communication client.

One of the most easily recognizable new features due out this spring is the new Universal Search, which allows business data from nearly any enterprise application (including Salesforce.com, SAP, and Microsoft SharePoint) to be accessed in Yammer’s search engine. All activity from those applications will also appear in Yammer’s Activity ticker feed, which functions a lot like Facebook’s news ticker.

The basic idea behind Universal Search is to provide one tool for people to search across all their business data, Yammer CTO and co-founder Adam Pisoni told VentureBeat in an interview. “Most enterprise applications have a slow search tool that crawls and indexes all the information behind a firewall,” he said, adding that those tools require login screens that obviously don’t play nice with cloud applications. And much of the communication people have through social networks lives in the cloud, so this is obviously something Yammer wants to fix.

Pisoni said the search results will appear within separate tabs for each integrated program, and search results will be based on each individual user’s behavior.

Yammer is also giving all users access to “Yammer Embed,” which was previously in private beta testing and only available by request. Yammer Embed is basically a widget that can be added to any business application to enhance its social profile.

New group pricing and external sharing

Integration isn’t the only thing Yammer is focused on. The company is also rolling out a new Premium Groups option, which is tailored to specific department of a business that may want to jump into using Yammer before others. For $79 per month, Premium Groups offers unlimited users, increased file storage limits, and advanced admin controls. Think of it as a way for Yammer to get its foot in the door for companies who don’t yet see the appeal of adding a social network-like tool to their office communication arsenal.

Yammer also wants to make it easier to share between groups on the same network, and its rolling out a new tool that allows groups to cross-post files, conversations, and pages. This could come in handy for larger companies that can’t resort to using the “All networks” communication feed.

The other big change to sharing that Yammer is implementing is a way to communicate with the outside world. As such, it’s setting up a new “Email File” button that enables employees to send messages third-parties (like contracted workers, company partners, outside firms, etc.) a one-time URL to view a file or Page. Viewing rights can be revoked at any time, and the Yammer network admin can turn this functionality off if necessary.

Pisoni told me this particular method of sharing is more secure than regular email communication, and less cumbersome than the large file-sending services like YouSendIt.

Founded in September 2008, the San Francisco-based startup has raised a total of $142 million in funding to date.

Image via Peshkova /Shutterstock