What Is Cloud Integration?

7 Benefits of Cloud Integration

You can propel your business forward with cloud integration in many new ways. Here are the top seven benefits:

Break down data silos

Cloud integration seamlessly brings together the data that helps businesses run – from sales and operations to strategy and financial planning. Communication is easier and workflows are smoother. You can deliver goods and services more efficiently and better predict and fulfill the needs of your customers.

Enable business agility

Because cloud integration allows you to work with different data formats across different data systems, you can launch new services, products and applications faster. And you can more quickly respond to changing market environments and business opportunities to stay competitive.

Boost connectivity

Cloud integration unites and synchronizes your applications. Your information stays readily available anytime with application programming interface (API) calls.

Save time and money

With cloud integration, you can combine data and applications quickly and easily with automation without the need for costly handwritten code.

Operate at scale

Scalability is key to processing particularly large amounts of enterprise data. Standby cloud applications can quickly process and integrate data at scale on the order of petabytes.

Improve data quality and accuracy

During the data integration process, the data is cleaned and prepped before it is stored in a data warehouse.

Power data analytics

Cloud data integration brings all your data together in a highly accessible ecosystem. Data is cleaned and is ready for analysis. You can easily apply artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) on demand.

Learn more about the cloud integration leaders in the software development industry.

Cloud Integration Solutions

Centralizing all your data into a cloud data center helps you get the most value out of it. Here are some solutions that work with cloud integration. They can help you advance your digital transformation journey:

Get broad ecosystem support at scale with iPaaS

An integration platform as a service (iPaaS) lets your master data management (MDM) combine and exchange data between applications. With iPaaS, you can build, launch and govern integration flows. iPaaS connects the data, services and applications within your cloud ecosystem.

Build data pipelines with APIs

Once your data is integrated, you can build data pipelines. Your data pipelines will be based on:

• Information you’ve accessed and prepared
• Data models you’ve built
• Algorithms you've used
  

Data pipelines feed your business-critical applications. These can include your ecommerce site and your customer management system (CMS). An intelligent API management solution enables data insights and integration-driven pipelines. The pipelines can readily connect your lines of businesses, customers and partners with the click of a button.

See data and relationships with master data management

MDM gives you a single source of truth for all your data. MDM lets you view your business-critical data from a central location. MDM uses AI/ML. It gives you 360-degree insights into your data connections, interactions and relationships.

Maintain data quality with a built-in program

You’ll want a built-in data quality program. It will let you monitor, identify and fix data quality problems. You can do this in your cloud and on-premises business applications.

Extend data integration to your business partners with EDI

Look for a program that lets you streamline and expedite B2B relationships. Electronic data interchange (EDI) exchanges business information between computers in a structured, standardized way. This makes data easy to consume.

Manage your finances seamlessly

Financial data management lets you go beyond just viewing financial reports. An AI-powered MDM program gives you a 360-degree view of your finances so you can easily:

• See account structures across systems
• Collaborate with accountants across your enterprise
• Manage accounts, cost centers, account codes, legal entities and other financial data

Manage reference data

It’s difficult to manage reference data sets. A user-friendly, configurable and sharable cloud-based reference management program helps with this challenge.

Connect analysts to your data for real-time insights

Your analysts and SaaS administrators need real-time insights from cloud applications. Select a solution for cloud connectors that can handle all your cloud, on-premises, mobile and social data sources.

Cloud Integration Use Cases

The process of cloud integration is similar across industries. But the main use cases vary. Here’s a snapshot of some of them:

Healthcare

Data silos can impact patient care. Cloud integration enables interoperability and patient-first care. It does this by strengthening provider communication. It also opens up patient access to health records and applications aimed at improving health outcomes.

Manufacturing

Cloud integration helps companies manage product quality. It can integrate data across engineering systems, parts, assemblies, supply chains and shipping.

Financial Services

Banks integrate checking, savings, mortgage, credit card and call center data. Customers get a unified service experience. It helps employees predict a customer’s financial needs to cross-sell or upsell other offerings.

Public Sector: Government

State and local governments use cloud integration to provide online services. Organizations from police departments to departments of motor vehicles (DMV) benefit from cloud integration. Some cloud integration services include:

• Vehicle registration renewal
• Home remodel permitting
• Voter registration
• Federal taxing
• Security assurance

Public Sector: Health

Cloud integration is essential for gathering massive amounts of data. Use cases that depend on high volumes of data include evaluating health risk factors and the impact of viruses like Covid-19. Cloud integration is also critical when vaccine developers need to expedite the production and delivery of vaccines. The same is true of researchers when they need to effectively recruit research subjects and track them through clinical trials.

Remote staff

The pandemic forced many companies to conduct business entirely or mainly online. Rather than build their own data centers, companies quickly turned to the cloud and cloud integration for smooth day-to-day operations.

Cloud Integration Examples

In a time when some businesses struggle to keep the lights on, others come out ahead. Their secret: harnessing the power of cloud services, including cloud integration.

Enabling a Timely Response with Cloud Integration

Japan for UNHCR (J4U) is a nonprofit agency that protects displaced and stateless people. J4U depends on donations. But during the Covid-19 pandemic, social distancing requirements hampered their fundraising efforts.

With a centralized data repository and Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud, they were able to:

• Quickly spin up a cloud contact center
• Keep donations and contact data flowing
• Synchronize their virtual call center with Salesforce
• Reduce manual processes
• Improve operating efficiency
• Keep operating costs low
• Channel more donations directly to the people they serve

Building Brand Loyalty with Cloud Integration

Moving to a cloud environment is a big part of the omnichannel strategy at Reitmans Limited. For the Canadian specialty women’s clothing chain, online sales were booming until the pandemic hit.

To grow their business, the company decided to move to the cloud and chose Informatica for their migration. Their data management was simplified with integration of both their cloud data and applications. The benefits included:

• Seamless buyer journeys
• Real-time tracking between order fulfillment and order tracking
• Increased ecommerce revenues
• Enhanced customer loyalty and trust

Getting Started with Cloud Integration

No matter what industry you’re in, sharing data across the enterprise is critical. Your cloud integration solution needs to be simple, intuitive and capable of processing data with flexibility and scalability. Informatica is a recognized leader in the data management industry, offering a variety of cloud integration products to help propel your business into the future. Here’s some additional resources about Informatica cloud integration and other data management solutions:

Free Trial: Cloud Data Integration

Webinar: Integrate Cloud and On-Premises Applications - No-Coding Required

iPaaS ROI guidebook

Informatica webinars

Informatica free trials