Issue link: https://cp.revolio.com/i/549869
18 | THE DATA CENTER JOURNAL www.datacenterjournal.com cloud-based apps but still relies on SAP for finance. Now imagine that the CEO goes to the CIO and makes what once was a very simple request: "Give me a list of our customers." In the old days, there was just one system of record, so the request was easy to fulfill with the click of a mouse. But now information resides in multiple systems. Some entities listed in Sales- force.com are not customers. And some customers in Salesforce.com responded to a "free offer," so no invoice was generated in SAP. And what if "Dell Boomi" is in one system, "Boomi" in another, and "Dell" in a third? When there are tens of thousands of entities in multiple siloed systems, both on-premises and in the cloud, coming up with a definitive customer list could take a CIO weeks. Unless, in this hybrid IT environ- ment, information is properly moved, managed and governed. Move A principle challenge is the need to connect the systems and move data around. For example, let's consider the lead-to-cash process: if a new customer is entered in Marketo, that customer needs to be automatically available to Salesforce and SAP. And when sales close in Salesforce. com, the sales order must be sent to SAP for invoicing. is is a classic business process automation problem, and if an organization sees traditional middleware as the only way to solve it, then, yes, hybrid IT may seem daunting. Middleware was never designed for cloud and mobile use cases, and the type of development effort required by middleware solutions would tend to undercut all the agility and cost benefits of hybrid IT. But today there are a number of cloud-based integration provid- ers that make it fast and easy to integrate cloud-based and on-premises applications to automate common business processes. Manage Once information is shared across all the cloud and on-premises applications, updating that information must be auto- matic. If a customer address is changed in Salesforce.com, it needs to be updated in Marketo and SAP. is situation is a classic—well, almost classic—master-data- management (MDM) problem. How do you maintain a single version of the truth? Unfortunately, traditional MDM collects its golden records in a separate data hub, and the source systems themselves are not updated. Although such a limitation can be overcome in a closed and tightly controlled on-premises deployment, it doesn't work for cloud-based solutions. Once again, the cloud solves its own challenges. Cloud- based MDM providers now offer bidirec- tional MDM, so a change in one system is automatically authorized, quality assured, approved and updated in all connected systems. Govern No system is complete and usable if you can't scale it, secure it, and manage roles and responsibilities related to who has access to what and who can change what. In the past, governance was built into ERP and CRM systems. In a cloud-based world, applications connect and com- municate using application programming interfaces (APIs). As such, the governance role is now handled by API-management solutions that provide a single central interface for managing the API lifecycle: creating them, publishing them for access by others and applying controls over their usage whether on premises or in the cloud. An API-management solution should also be able to prioritize access to an API so critical processes always have the re- quired level of performance. For example, let's say developers create a powerful new mobile app for sales that pulls informa- tion from SAP, Marketo, Salesforce.com and third-party sources such as D&B. But if the app doesn't command API priority, the sales team may well find the delays intolerable and quickly abandon the app. e API-management solution should also enable the enterprise to assign roles and re- sponsibilities, including who has the right to make changes to the cloud applications on behalf of the entire enterprise. looking for a solution So is "move, manage and govern" all there is to solving the hybrid IT challenge? Not really. ere will be a few more check- boxes to cross off, but these three items are the foundation, and by solving them first, IT will acquire the knowledge and resources it needs to complete its transfor- mation even as it sets up the organization for greater agility and competitiveness. When looking for a vendor or vendors to support the adoption of hybrid IT, make sure the solution offers most of the capabilities you need and that it has a single, simple interface that makes it as fast and as easy as possible to accomplish the most important tasks. Most importantly, recognize that hy- brid IT is the future, and IT managers who embrace it are setting themselves and their organizations up for long-term success. e possibilities are limitless, especially in the area of analytics. For example, consider the following. It turns out that 40 percent of the costs in the average emergency room are related to respiratory problems, and many of the respiratory problems are related to asthma and allergy issues. To take a closer look at this situation, we aggregated data from 10 different sources, including electronic-medical-record hubs (blind data including no person- ally identifiable information) as well as weather and pollution sites. We then used advanced analytics soware to analyze this data and found that we could predict the individuals who were most likely to have an asthma problem on a specific day of the week. Armed with such an application, a health-care organization would be able to email specific patients a warning to take whatever precautions they could, such as staying indoors that day, to avoid the most severe symptoms. Everybody would benefit. Patients would be happier and hospital costs would go down. And this is just one small example of the power of hybrid IT. All you have to do is imagine the possibilities. n about the author: Chris McNabb is General Manager of Dell Boomi.