Salesforce has built on last year's release of Lightning Connect with Salesforce Connect, a new tool it says can tap into third-party data sources without the need to write any code. Here are the details from an official Salesforce blog:
We took another dramatic leap forward last year when we unveiled Lightning Connect, a service that allows developers and business admins to build real-time integrations with external data sources fast, without writing any code.
With Salesforce Connect, Salesforce users can now create, read, update and delete records in various external sources--such as order management, receivables, or inventory management systems--in real-time, directly from Salesforce.
Custom Adapters - With Salesforce Connect, you can also write simple Apex adapters that allow you to connect to API’s that aren’t in the OData format. This allows developers to easily connect Salesforce to any web API, as well as connect to the more than 10,000 public API’s available on the Internet. You can find additional information on how to use the Adapters here.
Salesforce Connector - If you have multiple Salesforce “orgs,” or instances, in your company--whether across regions, subsidiaries, or functions--you can now easily connect them without writing a single line of code. Company mergers, for example, often brought with them the challenge of integrating disparate instances of Salesforce. No longer.
Early adopters of Salesforce Connect include the hot HR software startup Zenefits:
Zenefits used Salesforce Connect to integrate its data warehouse with the Sales Cloud, giving sales reps a 360-degree, real-time view of customer policy and benefits information. Sales reps no longer need to switch between seven applications, and the company has seen a dramatic reduction in data discrepancy. The integration took only two days.
HR consulting provider O.C. Tanner was another reference cited in Salesforce's announcement:
The service reps at O.C. Tanner, a human resources consulting company, needed a way to bring down call resolution times. Being able to search, access and edit order data without leaving Salesforce was key. The company used Salesforce Connect to build and deploy real-time integration from Service Cloud to SAP in just hours, and was able to reduce call resolution time by 50 percent.
The Bottom Line
It will be interesting to see how Connect evolves moving forward, given that at first blush, its advances over Lightning Connect seem to bring Salesforce into a bit closer competition with data-integration partners such as Dell Boomi and Jitterbit.
Connect is still new and has much room to grow. For now at least, it's not going to replace tools for massive app-to-app integration scenarios, such as between SAP and Workday, says Constellation Research founder and CEO R "Ray Wang.
Second, Connect is obviously far less agnostic than those competitors, given it revolves around users living in Salesforce who want to reach out to other applications. There are pros and cons here, Wang notes. "On the one hand, it's native," he says. "On the other, there's more lock-in."
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