Firms right now need to leverage their knowledge to help 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 Information Pipeline (HDP) connectivity resolution, which permits firms to securely join cloud and on-premises knowledge to BI instruments.
The HDP resolution cannot solely be used to attach knowledge internally, however can be utilized by SaaS distributors to attach third-party knowledge and reporting instruments to allow them to ship extra worth to their clients.
For instance, Onit, an organization that helps firms handle their authorized workflows, was discovering that clients typically would need to herald their very own reporting instruments, typically requiring customized work to set it up.
Onit made an funding within the HDP resolution as a means to have the ability to present extra advantages to its clients with no need to continually construct customized integrations. Thus, Onit began operating the Hybrid Information Pipeline resolution in its personal surroundings and gives a REST API interface—OData—to securely share hosted knowledge with its clients and have these clients make the most of their very own reporting software program, defined Aaron Burg, Principal Gross sales Engineer at Progress.
“The great factor with REST APIs is you don’t need to distribute something, and all of the BI instruments already know the best way to interface with it mechanically,” mentioned Burg.
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MHC is one other buyer that has had success with utilizing the HDP resolution for connectivity. Its NorthStar doc automation platform is utilized by greater than 1,000 clients throughout quite a lot 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 line with Tom McMahon, Senior Architect of the platform at MHC, it was simple for purchasers who already saved their knowledge within the cloud to modify to the cloud software, however with a view to help clients who solely maintain their knowledge on-premises, an answer was wanted to allow the cloud software to get entry to that knowledge.
“We determined to do a proof of idea on the Hybrid Information Pipeline resolution,” McMahon mentioned. “It was simple to arrange and get it up and operating. It regarded like it will deal with many necessities with out quite a lot of work on our aspect to combine into our system—and that’s once we determined to maneuver ahead with Progress.”
Dennis Bennett, Principal Gross sales Engineer at Progress, mentioned that quite a lot of these clients with on-premises knowledge are in extremely regulated industries, and so utilizing Progress’ on-premises connector gives them with higher confidence that their knowledge is protected.
In line 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 resolution that MHC is operating. “It’ll all be outbound connectivity, so it’ll be initiated from that agent behind the firewall,” he mentioned.
In line with Burg, it’s simple to get began with a proof of idea utilizing Progress DataDirect’s free trial, and an organization may very well be up and operating with that in a matter of some hours.
“We offer you free pre-sales help to get it operating, so there’s a low funding to strive the HDP resolution and get a really feel for the way it works. You’ll be able to select one or two of your clients and do a small pilot undertaking the place you get some suggestions from them to allow them to see that it’s helpful of their surroundings, and from there, you’ll be able to determine if you wish to scale that out to a wider viewers,” Burg mentioned.
