Firms at this time wish to leverage their knowledge to assist enterprise intelligence (BI) initiatives, however with out the right knowledge connectivity processes and instruments in place, that knowledge may stay locked in silos. Enter the Progress DataDirect Hybrid Knowledge Pipeline (HDP) connectivity answer, which permits firms to securely join cloud and on-premises knowledge to BI instruments.
The HDP answer can’t solely be used to attach knowledge internally, however will also be utilized by SaaS distributors to attach third-party knowledge and reporting instruments to allow them to ship extra worth to their prospects.
For instance, Onit, an organization that helps firms handle their authorized workflows, was discovering that prospects typically would wish to usher in their very own reporting instruments, typically requiring customized work to set it up.
Onit made an funding within the HDP answer as a approach to have the ability to present extra advantages to its prospects while not having to continually construct customized integrations. Thus, Onit began operating the Hybrid Knowledge Pipeline answer in its personal setting and gives a REST API interface—OData—to securely share hosted knowledge with its prospects and have these prospects make the most of their very own reporting software program, defined Aaron Burg, Principal Gross sales Engineer at Progress.
“The good factor with REST APIs is you don’t must distribute something, and all of the BI instruments already know methods to interface with it mechanically,” mentioned Burg.
RELATED CONTENT: Breaking down knowledge silos: The ability of Microsoft Cloth and Progress DataDirect
MHC is one other buyer that has had success with utilizing the HDP answer for connectivity. Its NorthStar doc automation platform is utilized by greater than 1,000 prospects throughout a wide range of industries, together with monetary providers, healthcare, authorities, manufacturing and retail.
MHC started utilizing HDP knowledge connectivity about three years in the past when it constructed a cloud model of the NorthStar platform. In accordance with Tom McMahon, Senior Architect of the platform at MHC, it was straightforward for patrons who already saved their knowledge within the cloud to modify to the cloud utility, however as a way to assist prospects who solely preserve their knowledge on-premises, an answer was wanted to allow the cloud utility to get entry to that knowledge.
“We determined to do a proof of idea on the Hybrid Knowledge Pipeline answer,” McMahon mentioned. “It was simple to arrange and get it up and operating. It regarded like it will handle many necessities with out lots of work on our facet to combine into our system—and that’s after we determined to maneuver ahead with Progress.”
Dennis Bennett, Principal Gross sales Engineer at Progress, mentioned that lots of these prospects with on-premises knowledge are in extremely regulated industries, and so utilizing Progress’ on-premises connector gives them with larger confidence that their knowledge is secure.
In accordance with Bennett, the DataDirect connector is a light-weight agent that will get put in behind the client’s firewall after which creates connections with the cloud-hosted model of the HDP answer that MHC is operating. “It should all be outbound connectivity, so it’ll be initiated from that agent behind the firewall,” he mentioned.
In accordance with Burg, it’s straightforward to get began with a proof of idea utilizing Progress DataDirect’s free trial, and an organization might be up and operating with that in a matter of some hours.
“We provide you with free pre-sales assist to get it operating, so there’s a low funding to attempt the HDP answer and get a really feel for the way it works. You may select one or two of your prospects and do a small pilot venture the place you get some suggestions from them to allow them to see that it’s helpful of their setting, and from there, you possibly can resolve if you wish to scale that out to a wider viewers,” Burg mentioned.
