Jitterbit Seeks To Bring Harmony To The Cloud

Jitterbit envisions a world in which Oracle, SAP, Salesforce and Microsoft harmoniously coexist across enterprise networks, all generating data that seamlessly flows from one rival platform to another.

The Alameda, Calif.-based cloud integration vendor has spent more than a decade building out the connective tissue to unite those disparate enterprise solutions with each other, and with custom on-premise software, social networking platforms and a burgeoning number of Software-as-a-Service tools.

Jitterbit's APIs, visually managed through the Harmony cloud integration platform, act as the glue, linking "everything back beyond the firewall with everything that's outside the firewall," said Andrew Leigh, vice president of marketing alliances.

[Related: The 10 Coolest Big Data Products Of 2015 (So Far)]

Last week, Jitterbit unveiled Harmony Live. The new solution represents an effort to democratize API usage by allowing clients to assign data, apps or devices their own real-time APIs.

Leigh said Harmony Live makes possible the three types of integrations Jitterbit's customers expect: traditional data integration, process integration and real-time API management.

The platform will help break down geographic and departmental walls in an era in which half of the Fortune 500 are struggling to transition to conducting digital business, he told CRN.

Leigh, a veteran of Salesforce, said the desire to break down data silos and embrace digital business models has driven 120 percent year-over-year growth at Jitterbit over the past two years.

"We are all about moving at the speed of the cloud. Seventy-five percent of our customers go live in less than 30 days," Leigh said.

In the near future, "digital companies will be powered by thousands, maybe millions, of orchestrated APIs," he said. Those interfaces, acting as e-commerce gateways, will create new business-to-business opportunities. They'll also add revenue channels that partners can tap, he said.

Jitterbit wants to expand access to working with such APIs beyond developers, he said. Business analysts too should be able to connect gateways natively to the company's core systems and orchestrate end-to-end business processes.

Jitterbit has some 700 enterprise accounts and drives roughly a quarter of its global business through its channel, according to the company.

But the company, which has 215 resale partners -- from systems integrators to vendors like Salesforce and Netsuite -- sees that percentage climbing to 40 or 50 over the next three years.

Salesforce is an investor, as is Autodesk, which uses Jitterbit as the connectivity layer of its product life cycle management solution.

Vertiba, an IT consultant based in Boulder, Colo., partnered with Jitterbit to improve public transportation in a large U.S. city.

They integrated that transit agency's Salesforce CRM with the point-of-sales system deployed in terminals, buses and trains to sell and validate fare cards, said Chad Kelly, Vertiba's director of technical architecture.

"Jitterbit's partner program was extremely responsive getting our deal done and providing support to deliver the middleware interfaces fast," Kelly told CRN via email, adding that he employed Harmony Live, coupled with Salesforce's Lightning Connect feature, to rapidly deliver real-time visibility at the point of sale without writing any code.

"The connectivity enabled Vertiba to deliver new self-service e-commerce capabilities, such as the ability to register cards and add products to cards already in patrons' pockets, and the ability for patrons to view their trip history online," he told CRN.

"The new architecture is projected to drastically reduce costs and inefficiencies as a result of agent swivel seating, patron phone inquiries and maintaining duplicative data across systems."

PUBLISHED JULY 20, 2015