Integration transactions account for >55% of Salesforce’s 2B+ daily transactions. There are over 4M customer apps and 3000+ partner made apps which integrate with Salesforce. Hundreds of thousands of companies who have adopted Salesforce are able to integrate it to function cohesively with their on-premise and cloud applications. What makes integration with Salesforce so easy?
1. Completely open platform
Access any field any record in Salesforce using standards based REST & SOAP APIs.
You can interact with your data in Salesforce from external systems as easily as if it was in your local database. Loading data in Salesforce, exporting data out of Salesforce, updating or inserting data from external programs are straightforward tasks in Salesforce.
2. Technology Agnostic
Access Salesforce from any language and any external system.
Since Salesforce APIs are standards based you can access them from any language – e.g. .NET, Java, PHP. You can even access Salesforce database through SQL clients using ODBC drivers from Progress Software.
3. Partner Eco-System: Pre-built Connectors, ETL tools and Middleware
Productized Integration-as-a-Service offerings simplify integration
Since Salesforce is the leading cloud application, thousands of connectors exist to connect Salesforce with other applications. These connectors have been made by middleware vendors (like Jitterbit and TIBCO) as well as the application providers themselves (e.g. Oracle’s Salesforce Connector).
Most of these connectors exist as cloud based solutions and serve as a middle-layer between Salesforce and your applications – facilitating exchange of data. Since these are cloud based connectors, you don’t have to install them and manage them on premise. Also, these connectors provide pre-built templates which map Salesforce data model to other applications data model – making the integration process very simple. As an example, Jitterbit’s enterprise connector has mapping of Salesforce EBS application to Salesforce, so once you set up the connector, you can almost immediately start a bi-directional data exchange between Salesforce and Oracle EBS.
You can find many of the connectors on Salesforce AppExchange. Many others are directly available from the connector vendor themselves.
4. Salesforce Integrations are Future Proof
The integrations you do with Salesforce are future-proof since Salesforce upgrades do not break integrations. In almost all cases, you do not have to do anything special (apart from testing) when a new release of Salesforce becomes available. This really simplifies the whole integration project.
5. Innovative Tools from Salesforce Simplify Integration
Finally, Salesforce itself is continually innovating and releasing new integration tools and technologies which simplify integration. Salesforce Canvas (enterprise mashups), Heroku Connect, Lightning Out and Salesforce Lightning Connect are integration tools from Salesforce with which you can integrate your system with Salesforce.
In summary, we have come a long way from the time when integrations used to be complex projects costing millions of dollars and spread over years. Today, integrations can be created in hours and days using new technologies – often by business users themselves.