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SaaS: integration in cloud

By Judith Lamont, Ph.D
KM World Magazine
1st January 2010
Building trust in the cloud

Users of individual SaaS products have generally become confident that their vendor is proficient in maintaining security, ensuring that data is backed up and carrying out other support tasks. However, venturing more broadly into “the cloud,” where many applications may be used as services, is a different matter; establishing trust with numerous third-party suppliers is a complex process.

To help address the problem, Vordel introduced the Vordel Cloud Service Broker in November 2009. It manages multidomain cloud services by registering them in a single repository to facilitate monitoring and policy enforcement. Cloud Service Broker also optimizes performance by providing caching, acceleration and data transformation.

A large retailer is using the Vordel Cloud Service Broker to manage connections to an Amazon service, the Amazon Gift Codes on Demand (AGCoD). That service replaces plastic gift cards by distributing them via e-mail, HTML or paper. It is accessed through a Web Service API that exposes Amazon’s technology to other systems. The Vordel Cloud Service Broker provides the necessary authentications and digital signatures. The monitoring capability lets the retailer track service frequency and usage via Flash-based metrics and Web-based reports.

“With the emergence of SaaS and storage as a service, customers wanted to create composite applications that included components from the cloud,” says Vic Morris, CEO of Vordel. “But with this complexity comes the need for monitoring and management.”

Although many companies start with non-mission-critical applications for their cloud services, use is expanding rapidly. “It is a compelling model,” Morris says, “and one that is growing rapidly in the KM space.” Vordel, which has a history in XML and SOA integration, is also exploring the opportunities for matching customers with the burgeoning list of available cloud services.

Judith Lamont, KMWorld senior writer
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