Jitterbit And Amazon Combo Unlocks Salesforce Data

Jitterbit has announced what it says is the first in a series of applications that help users more easily integrate and store data with cloud-based services. The first, called CloudReplicate for Salesforce, works with the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and mirrors Salesforce data into a relational database on Amazon EC2.

CloudReplicate for Salesforce gives users the ability to use standard relational database tools that are more sophisticated than those available with Salesforce, as well as the ability to replicate the data at a lower cost than with Salesforce. The software supports MySQL, SQL Server and Oracle-based data warehouses in the cloud.

Jay Roy, CEO of AWPRx a developer of pharmacy benefit software for workers compensation cases, is using the product to help AWPRx move the data in a 10-year-old Oracle Java application to Salesforce. The AWPRx software provides information to more than 60,000 pharmacies, as well as to claims adjusters, Roy says. "Jitterbit helps us move our data back and forth, in real time, between clients, us and pharmacies," he says. Previously, the company had used software from Cast Iron Systems, but while that worked fine on a local-area network, AWPRx was moving to the cloud full-time and the Cast Iron product wouldn't work, Roy adds.

The relational database populated with Salesforce data is typically provisioned within three to four hours, "unless it's gargantuan," says Ilan Sehayek, CTO for Jitterbit. It is particularly useful for organizations that want to tie multiple objects together in a many-to-many relationship, for which Salesforce's limited query language is unsuitable, and to give users access to a large amount of unchanging archived data without having to pay Salesforce's high storage charges. The application takes advantage of a functionality called Jitterpak, or reusable integration templates, which can be shared between deployments.

The Jitterbit application is a useful mechanism for permitting easier data integration and simplifing data synchronization to cloud-based warehouses as organizations become more reliant on cloud-oriented services such as Salesforce, says Jeffrey Kaplan, managing director of THINKstrategies, a Massachusetts consultancy.The application is particularly useful in giving users access to historical data without having to load it all into Salesforce, says Mark Smith, CEO and executive VP of research for Ventana Research. In addition, for information security purposes, the application makes it simpler to manage data assets without having to replicate more data than needed, says Smith.

CloudReplicate for Salesforce is available now starting at $899 per month. A free 30-day trial is also available.

The application comes as a preconfigured Amazon Machine Image on Amazon's EC2 cloud service. The company also indicates that it is working on similar cloud-based integrations with other products. Jitterbit has been selling the product on a custom basis for about three years but has made it a stand-alone product within the past six months, Jitterbit's Sehayek says.