Businesses investing in cloud infrastructure have numerous considerations to make in order to optimize their deployments. One of the core concerns for many stakeholders is the interoperability of the technology. Being able to easily move data in and out of a cloud platform is essential for avoiding vendor lock-in, but it is also a critical factor for companies that are using multiple solutions.
Utilizing multiple cloud servers with little or no way for the technology to communicate effectively creates information silos, complicating data management practices. Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Citigroup advisor Irving Wladawsky-Berger recently observed that this is not unlike the problems created by disparate on-premise systems.
"Eventually, this made it difficult to share processes and consolidate IT resources in order to improve the quality and reduce the costs of the overall IT infrastructure," Wladawsky-Berger wrote. "Enterprises then started to consolidate most of these departmental servers into a few large centralized data centers that were easier to manage and secure."
The problem has reemerged due to the differences in public and private cloud architecture, though Wladawsky-Berger noted that platforms such as OpenStack may help to break down the barriers between the two models. He predicted that the growing popularity of open cloud solutions would lead to more standardized interfaces to facilitate communication between services from different providers.
Customer relationship management software serves as a prominent example of how cloud integration is essential to modern applications. As Forbes contributor Louis Columbus noted, the value of these solutions depends heavily on the context of data.
Highlighting comments from Scribe Software CEO Lou Guercia, Columbus noted that there has been growing interest in the concept for an API marketplace among enterprise software buyers. This emphasis on open standards and portability between architectures may push for growth in the cloud-based CRM market.
