SnapLogic 2.0 and "Really Simple Integration"

Today, RedMonk client SnapLogic released the 2.0 version of their product. Their whole deal is layering easy to use interfaces on-top of data silos. Essentially, making public web-like interfaces (REST and friends) and APIs for “enterprise” data sources. As SnapLogic put it last week when I talked with them, it’s for “everything that might hang off an ESB.” They’re not limited to such data sources of course – any data silo will do – but that’s the area where I see the most need for better, web-like APIs.

They have a web-based UI that, essentially, is similar to Yahoo! Pipes, but made for more business, enterprise, and definitely behind-the-firewall use. The SnapLogic stack is open source (GPL) and, being a commercial company, they sell support for the use of the stack, but also dual license a commercial version of the stack. The commercial version is for those who want to OEM or embed the stack in their own software.

Stephen O’Grady and I visited with SnapLogic a little while ago on-site. During the demo, the thing that excited me the most was a seemingly simple scenario: they had a couple silos of sales and lead data that they pulled together into a simple HTML table in a web browser. There was also a CSV file. But thing was, they’d managed to do the simple task of wrapping a URL around the result of mashing up a bunch of different data. From here, you can do all sorts of fun things: doing quick and easy integration into other web applications, RIAs (see their WaveMaker partnership), applications, and, most interestingly, sucking it into the original mashup engine, Microsoft Excel.

It’s easy to look over “simple” results like this. But, any developer who’s had to do the thankless task of integrating together bunch of data knows the real tediousness of that seemingly simple task. As Mark Pilgrim‘s used to say:”A lot of effort went into making this effortless.”

Disclaimer: as mentioned above, SnapLogic is a client.

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