SaaS Integration: SkillSoft

SkillSoft: The e-Learning SaaS Provider

In today’s competitive business environment, well-trained and knowledgeable employees can mean the difference between success and failure. SkillSoft, an e-learning Software as a Service (SaaS) provider, enables enterprises to develop employee skills and knowledge through a variety of on-demand training courses, resource materials, and learning tools.

With flexible options for customers, the SkillSoft product suite is divided into three main categories: Content, Platform/Technology and Product Packages. SkillSoft’s content library encompass a wide selection of Course Collections in business skills, environmental health and safety compliance, legal compliance, desktop skills, and IT skills as well as thousands of professional books and leadership development videos. Through SkillSoft’s content offerings, users can learn the latest in accounting, finance, customer service, human resources, and project management in a convenient and flexible way.

In addition to high quality content, SkillSoft also provides technological solutions that support employee training and knowledge transfer. SkillPort, for instance, is a hosted platform for delivering e-learning content and can be leveraged as part of a learning management system (LMS). SkillSoft technologies also support virtual classroom learning through SkillSoft Dialogue and collaborative social learning though inGenius Social Learning. Although customers have the option of choosing among SkillSoft’s various content and technological offerings to best meet their needs, the company’s Product Packages conveniently combine learning platforms with targeted content to get you up and running quickly.

The Integration Challenges of SaaS

Although SkillSoft and other SaaS vendors provide flexible, scalable and cost-effective solutions to everyday business needs, they also present new challenges to enterprise users. The widespread use of SaaS applications and cloud services means that more and more data becomes segregated into disparate cloud silos, making business processes less efficient.

In order to eliminate cloud silos, enterprises need to integrate across different SaaS applications, cloud services and on-premise legacy applications, often times requiring advanced data transformation. Integration has in fact become a major priority for SaaS users. SkillSoft customers, for example, might consider the following integration use cases to improve business processes:

• Integrating SkillSoft content and resources with third-party LMS platforms
• Integrating education content from multiple external sources with SkillSoft’s Skillport platform
• Integrating SkillSoft offerings with employee performance software such as SuccessFactors integration

Custom Integrations

For SaaS users who have determined a need for integration, the next step is figuring out how to implement it. A common approach among enterprises, particularly due to the lack of packaged integration solutions, is to build custom point-to-point integrations. With this approach, companies rely on in-house developers or integration consultants to write integration code in order to connect different systems, such as SalesForce.com integration.

Although building custom integrations can produce quick results and allows companies to tailor integrations to specific business needs, it does come with the following disadvantages:

• Time and Cost: A custom integration approach can be quick and simple when you only need to connect 2 systems, but the time and effort required for building custom integrations increases exponentially when you add additional systems. These additional systems need to be integrated with every other component in the system. Moreover, if your company lacks in-house developers with integration expertise, hiring external consultants can make it difficult to stay within budget.
• Maintenance and Upgrades: Aside from developing the initial codebase, a custom integration approach also requires ongoing maintenance and upgrades to ensure that integrations run smoothly. This involves monitoring performance, fixing errors, and running tests that further eat up time and resources. They can also be a pain to manage.
• Flexibility: Custom integrations typically create dependencies between systems, creating rigid architectures that are difficult to change. For instance, let’s say App A and App B are connected by a custom integration. If changes are made to App A, App B also needs to be modified for compatibility. Such dependencies mean that businesses lose flexibility and agility when trying to meet changing customer demands.

iON: Integration for the Cloud Era

To make cloud integration simpler, Mule iON has emerged as a packaged Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) solution. With Mule iON, writing custom code is no longer required to quickly connect applications across the cloud and enterprise.

iON includes the following robust features:

• Cloud Connectors: By leveraging Mule iON’s growing library of cloud connectors, users can quickly connect to the most popular SaaS applications, including NetSuite, Salesforce.com, Sugar CRM, and Magento. Integration becomes simple and easy with Cloud Connectors, enabling non-technical users to quickly connect applications without extensive integration expertise.
• Development Toolkit: In addition to integrating applications via Cloud Connectors, Mule iON users can create custom integrations for specific use cases with an Eclipse-based flow designer called Mule Studio. Users can create new integration applications (iApps) with drag-and-drop tools and share them with other users. With this configuration approach to integration, users no longer need to write custom code and can deploy integrations more quickly.
• Secure Data Gateway: In addition to supporting SaaS-to-SaaS integration, Mule iON also supports SaaS-to-enterprise integration. Through the Secure Data Gateway, users can connect SaaS applications with legacy systems and access data residing behind the firewall without compromising security.
• Browser-Based Management Portal: Visibility is crucial to managing and maintaining integrations. This is why Mule iON includes a management portal that provides deep visibility of integration flows and runtime performance, giving users greater control over integrations and tools for identifying bugs and errors. And since the management portal is browser-based, there is no need to download or install additional software.
• Cloud Essentials: As a fully cloud-based platform, Mule iON features cloud essentials, including multi-tenancy for data isolation and security and an elastic and scalable architecture. And like other cloud services, Mule iON offers a flexible pricing structure and self-service provisioning so that you only use and pay for what you need.