Industry's First Suite of Pre-built Data Connectors by Progress
By 2020, organizations will be able to analyze all relevant data and deliver actionable information that will achieve an extra $430 billion in productivity benefits over their less analytically oriented peers, according to IDC. Therefore, it is critical for businesses to expand the coverage of external data sources. To make it easier for its customers, Progress announced the availability of a new set of SaaS CRM connectors as part of the Progress DataDirect Hybrid Data Pipeline. The new suite of open standard connectors provides open data connectivity to SaaS CRM solutions, including Salesforce, SugarCRM, Veeva CRM, Microsoft Dynamics and Oracle Sales Cloud.
“ISVs in the analytics and data management space need a way to easily integrate with and pull data from a wide range of CRM solutions,” said Dion Picco, General Manager, Data Connectivity & Integration, Progress. “Our support for SaaS CRM with open SQL and REST connectors provides ISVs with a great option to instantly connect standalone tools to CRM data for advanced analytics capabilities.”
Progress claims that they are the first provider to support this suite of CRM offerings with prebuilt standard connectors. Let’s discuss the advantages of having this kind of capability:
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Firewall-friendly access to on-premises data sources.
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Access all the latest SaaS, SQL, Big Data and NoSQL data sources such as Salesforce, Apache Hive, Marketo, Oracle, SQL Server, IBM DB2, Eloqua and more.
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Access your data sources through a standard interface of your choice – ODBC, JDBC or OData (REST).
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All customer-sensitive data is protected by encryption, both at rest (AES-256) and in transit (SSL/TLS).
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Through the Hybrid Data Pipeline, the connectivity layer of the CRM suite can now be self-hosted in any cloud or on-premise.
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Instant connection via standalone tools to CRM data for advanced analytics capabilities.
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Easy to work with a wide range of integration and analytics workloads.
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Optimize data connectivity.
“Partnering with Progress DataDirect enables us to better support our 1000+ enterprise customers with hybrid connectivity to on-premise databases such as SQL Server, Oracle and DB2, and we are excited about the new suite of CRM connectors to expand our coverage of external data sources,” said Harry Wong, CEO and President of CASAHL, a provider of enterprise-class solutions that take critical content to the cloud.
Connectivity Options
Interoperability with adjacent technologies such as CRM, DAM and multichannel campaign management is one of the major criteria when buyers are evaluating web content management vendors. In fact, Gartner stated in its report entitled, Critical Capabilities for Web Content Management: “Application leaders responsible for CRM and customer experience need to pay extra close attention to long-range future plans in order to make the right choice today.”
Using pre-built data connectors for SaaS CRM is not the only connectivity option that businesses have. The other options include building your own connectors to multiple CRMs, utilizing a SaaS connector, and purchasing a third-party connector application. As always, there is not the one-size-fits-all approach here. If all you need is a simple CRM synchronization, then writing a connector would not be a bad idea. However, when the level of complexity increases, building your own connector can become a time-consuming and expensive task. Therefore, it is important to deeply understand the required business outcomes which will span the next three to five years, during any technology purchasing decision-making process.
More and more enterprises are struggling with a wide range of data integration issues as maintaining CRM systems connected is not always easy. Progress’ prebuilt connectors make it much easier to access data from third-party analytics and data management tools, and other SaaS applications. Enabling end-users to connect to their CRM software without the need of coding leverages the value proposition for the businesses in the analytics and data management space.
Last week, Progress Sitefinity also announced the Sitefinity 10.0 beta version release. Hot on the heels of the new release, CMS-Connected reached out to Dale Young, Manager Sitefinity Sales & Channels, to inquire about what is paramount about Sitefinity 10. You can catch the full replay here.
Venus Tamturk
Venus is the Media Reporter for CMS-Connected, with one of her tasks to write thorough articles by creating the most up-to-date and engaging content using B2B digital marketing. She enjoys increasing brand equity and conversion through the strategic use of social media channels and integrated media marketing plans.