Open integration platforms to replace in-house developers?

Pervasive software CTO Mike Hoskins says application integration tools are not just for big firms with deep pockets

IT Week: Why did Pervasive decide to release an SDK for its latest integration product earlier this month?
Mike Hoskins: We have opened up our entire adapter architecture so that any independent software vendor (ISV) or corporate developer in the world can write adapters for their applications – they can simply embed integration and not have to worry. It is one way of making service-oriented architecture (SOA) understandable to everybody, because of the internal re-factoring and services build-out that everybody always has to do.

How many companies currently use off-the-shelf integration platforms like Data Integrator 9.0?
Ninety-nine per cent of application integration is done using in-house code developed by customers themselves. If I spoke to 40 companies in a room today, I would be shocked if even one of them had an integration platform. There are some big corporates using things on the scale of Cognos’ Infomatics [shortly to be acquired by IBM] but the fact that those sort of solutions cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year tends to scare a lot of people away.

Can you persuade the vast majority of companies using in-house development teams to adopt an integration platform?
I wish I had the answer but there is often a tough internal battle going on. We find ourselves actually selling to the people who write the customer code, and they are not always motivated to adopt a labour-saving device. But application integration issues will affect companies every few years as long as they exist, and the thinkers in management know it is not very efficient to do it on a project-oriented basis. Over time, integration tools will come to dominate. ISVs live and breathe integration, for example, which is a major nightmare for them.

Does software as a service (SaaS) present a problem to application integration?
The Achilles heel for the SaaS model is that people assume that because software is easy to discover, install and understand, integration will be easy as well. But it is always hard to connect two moving parts that are incompatible, more so with SaaS because the end points are often lost behind the firewall. When it comes to having some end points on premise and some in the sky, the challenge is getting them to talk.

How does Pervasive compete with other companies in the data integration market?
There are only a handful of pureplay software companies that can provide integration tools that enable companies to build interfaces that go back and forth between applications and databases, and Pervasive is one them. What separates Pervasive Data Integrator 9.0 is that it provides out-of-the-box connectivity with more than 150 connectors pre-built for top databases and applications, from Oracle and SQL Server all the way down to Sage.

About Mike Hoskins
Mike Hoskins is chief technology officer and general manager at data infrastructure specialist Pervasive Software.
Hoskins spent 15 years as president of Data Junction before its acquisition by Pervasive in 2003.
He has an extensive background in programming and systems development, having formed software company SaudiSoft in 1982.