S
Sumit Sarkar
Guest
Sumit and SaaSy at Dreamforce 2014
Meet “SaaSy.” For the most part, SaaSy and I get along. SaaSy represents the commitment by Salesforce to delivering technology with “no software.” Regardless of how software is delivered, we share a common goal–that is, to make technology as easy as possible, with my focus on data connectivity.
As SaaSy and I were hanging out at Dreamforce 2014 (see photo), it got me thinking about the top three vendor-neutral ways you can do more with Salesforce data—using less software.
1. Lightning Connect (new in Salesforce Winter ’15)
Progress® DataDirect® is an exclusive producer of OData from any source of data (on-premise or cloud) exposed as external objects to the Salesforce Platform with Lightning Connect. Salesforce admins and platform developers can use the self-service, point-and-click web UI of Progress® DataDirect Cloud® to get connected instantly. Connect to hundreds of supported data sources, including those behind the firewall such as SQL Server or Oracle, as well as sources in the cloud, such as other Salesforce organizations or an Amazon Redshift data warehouse. In fact, Salesforce professionals are now adding data integration to their LinkedIn profiles. Learn more about Salesforce Lightning Connect and DataDirect Cloud.
Salesforce1 Lightning Connect enables businesses to connect legacy business data with Salesforce. By leveraging the power of the Salesforce1 Platform, Progress is helping companies transform their back office.
─Scott Holden, Vice President, Platform, salesforce.com
Do you have hundreds of thousands of dollars at your disposal to start exploring the business potential of blending data from Salesforce from other systems? I certainly don’t. Wouldn’t it be great to have a point-and-click web UI that blends and prepares Salesforce Platform data with other business systems such as ERP, e-Commerce, Marketing Automation or Google Analytics for consumption by vendor-agnostic tools of choice? Once the data is prepared, you have unlimited options to consume the data, including extracts to Tableau or Microsoft Excel and open standards such as ODBC, JDBC and OData.
3. Direct SQL connectivity to the Salesforce Platform
I have presented about this topic at Dreamforce (watch the replay now) and shown how direct SQL access to the Salesforce Platform reduces complexity and saves a lot of extra hops from syncing databases, middleware, data integration platforms, and so forth.
Learn more
Get more information about the benefits of direct ODBC and JDBC connections to the Salesforce Platform.
Contact us, your favorite “vendor-neutral” vendor, to discover how to get more out of your Salesforce data. Contact us directly on the web; or we’d love to talk with you. Call us at 1-800-876-3101.
Author information
Principal Systems Engineer, Progress DataDirect at Progress Software
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