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Our IT environments have an increasing need to be connected. These days, any single company can be managing tens of thousands of points of integration. If all of that data is continually being copied, what IT ends up with is a data synchronization nightmare.
My fundamental rule when I was a CTO at JPMorgan Chase & Co. was if you could afford to not duplicate data when integrating, it was by far preferable. Yet as vital as one would think the ability to connect and not copy data within an ecosystem should be, it’s something that has largely been ignored. Until now.
What Salesforce Lightning Connect does is make it really easy to access data outside of Salesforce by reference in real-time and treat it as if it’s already within Salesforce. This means that enterprise architects (EAs) have choices when it comes to integrating.
By reference can be the default method and only if it becomes non performant does a switch need to be made to by copy. Considering that in the first stage of an integration design project it’s very hard to make that call; having options is big. Other reasons EAs might prefer to go the by copy way is if they are changing the master location of the data or if a data source if frequently unreliable or unavailable.
One of the most powerful features of Lightning Connect is that it makes the metadata associated with an external data source available within Salesforce. As a result, the external object looks and behaves like native data to the entire Salesforce1 Platform framework, all without moving any data.
This external data can be accessed via the API, component frameworks can be built around it in Lightning and Visualforce, it’s instantly mobile, and it can be used to build custom apps in Apex. Additionally, lookup relationships can be formed between objects within Salesforce and objects externally, and managed from within the Salesforce1 Platform.
Certain data sets change rapidly over time. To keep them current, IT typically has to set up synchronization cycles. Synchronization can be done frequently (every five minutes, for example), but it adds latency. With Lightning Connect, the moment data is changed on the back end, it’s automatically available in real-time when the user refreshes their screen.
Lightning Connect also offers EAs the chance to think about new data sources they want to add to their Salesforce experience that were previously too expensive to connect to. They are no longer required to spend time and money on storing and duplicating vast quantities of data if all they need are subsets of that data, say for customer orders or line items associated with those orders.
There is a growing trend that if you are going to expose a data source, the way to do it is as an OData source. OData is an open industry standard originally started by Microsoft and SAP, and now adopted by others.
This a standard that Salesforce believes will be increasingly prevalent. Lightning Connect uses the OData protocol under the hood to talk to the external data source. As a result, users do not need to worry about understanding different data source formats or the underlying technology.
Because Lightning Connect presents external data within the platform as if it were a custom object, using the data in mobile apps is just as easy as using it in a regular desktop app. It’s just there. All you have to do to make the data available for mobile is to build a mobile app. With Salesforce Lightning, you can build these apps incredibly fast.
With traditional integrations, you need the IT department to wield the integration tools and the business analysts to explain what the data actually means. Lighting Connect is so easy to use, you can put in the hands of those that really understand the data, including those analysts and Salesforce Admins.
That’s what Lightning Connect is about: making more information available within the Salesforce environment, so users can make better decisions around it.
You can read my related article, Why Integration Should Be About Connecting, Not Copying Data, here.
Adrian Kunzle is the SVP of Product, Platform at Salesforce, focusing on integration and data compliance. His goal is to make the complex space of information management simpler and easier for the customer. Prior to joining Salesforce, Kunzle was Managing Director and Global Head of Engineering and Architecture for JPMorgan Chase & Co. While there he was responsible for shaping the technology strategy of the bank and developing shared application services that could be used by more than one division. Kunzle has also held Chief Architect positions for Walker Digital and Bank One/First USA’s Consumer Lending division.
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