On-demand integration and add-on services

"The Achilles Heel of SAAS products in the integration challenge-people cannot wish away integration," said Hoskins. "The gotcha is how do I link to the legacy world? We have agent technology-a data gateway-that is part and parcel of our cloud...but sits inside the enterprise, touches all the systems, and acts as a conduit up to the cloud."

Another way in which Pervasive intends to differentiate DataCloud as an on-demand integration platform is through add-on services, which is the reason it's called a platform. In the coming weeks, the company plans to announce multiple products that will sit on top of the DataCloud.

Pervasive just might be on to something. As options for application deployment grow with cloud computing so to does the need for integration.

"People think that on demand is harder to integrate. That's just not the case," said Yankee Group analyst Sheryl Kingstone. "Whether it's premise-based or on-demand, integration is a pain no matter what you do."

Kingstone said what integration companies are starting to do is leverage what they've learned from on-demand application vendors. "You put [software] in the cloud. It can be multitenant, it can be an appliance, it can be hosted. Basically what Pervasive is doing is real on demand-you pick what you want, go online, click what you need and have it as a subscription. There is no installing, no hardware."

Enterprise Applications Consulting principal Joshua Greenbaum wrote in his blog, Enterprise Anti-matter, that application and process integration is one of the great opportunities for on-demand services: "Putting application integration into the hands of a specialized vendor that can mediate the myriad APIs needed to hook up different parts of the enterprise into a semi-seamless whole promises to be one of the truly amazing opportunities for on-demand services," Greenbaum wrote. "This is one of those no-brainer applications for on-demand (the other is analytics, in case you were wondering) that will become an even better reason to opt out of a major in-house development effort and leave the APIs to the professionals."