eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
Today: Cloud Elements (API virtualization and integration)
Company description: Cloud Elements claims to bring harmony to the world of application programming interfaces (APIs), allowing software providers to innovate faster and plug into digital ecosystems. The company’s one-to-many virtualized API integration platform enables developers to unify thousands of APIs, build common data models for core business functions, and reduce the pain, cost, and complexity of integration. Founded in 2012, Cloud Elements is headquartered in Denver, Colo., and serves customers worldwide.
The company’s latest platform includes new features that virtualize API integration, making it easier for software and service teams to proactively build, manage and scale digital ecosystems that accelerate product adoption and improve customer experience. The new platform addresses two big challenges for today’s development teams: 1) Reducing the pain, cost, and complexity of integration, which sucks up developer time and distracts from product innovation; and 2) increasing market opportunity by enabling customers to quickly adopt new software that works with their existing applications, while enabling collaboration across their extended ecosystem of customers, prospects, partners and supply chains.
Cloud Elements’ customer base includes large software platform companies such as SAP, IBM and Axway; independent software vendors DoubleDutch, FinancialForce, Microstrategy and Sage; financial technology providers Danske Bank, FIS, PaySimple and Western Union; and digital business units of large enterprises, such as Dun & Bradstreet and Xerox.
The privately held company was founded by CEO Mark Geene, an experienced SaaS executive and API enthusiast with experience at Oracle, IBM, AT&T, TenFold and Dorado Software. Cloud Elements has raised three rounds of founding, including a Series C ($25 million) in 2019 led by Mercato Partners, with additional funding from existing investors Access Ventures, American Express Ventures, Grotech Ventures, Harbert Growth Partners, Rally Ventures, and Upslope Ventures. Cloud Elements’ total capital raised is $46.2 million.
Markets: API integration, SaaS, digital ecosystems, enterprise software
International Operations: Denver (HQ), Dallas, Surrey, U.K.; Hyderabad, India
Product and Services: Cloud Elements 3.0 changes the economics of integration, allowing APIs to work in uniform ways across hundreds of applications while sharing common data models. Instead of requiring developers to build point-to-point connections using inconsistent APIs, Cloud Elements starts by unifying APIs with enhanced capabilities for authentication, discovery, search, error handling and API maintenance. These elements can then be combined into workflows (aka Formulas) that automate business processes across applications. Elements and Formulas can be easily modified, shared and re-used, significantly improving developer productivity. Elements also shield developers from underlying API changes, significantly reducing maintenance costs.
Key Features
Major features of Cloud Elements 3.0 include:
- Elements: Pre-built or custom integrations with enhanced capabilities for authentication, discovery, search, error handling and API maintenance. Cloud Elements 3.0 includes more than 200 pre-built integrations for a broad array of cloud applications and services, including ERP, CRM, human capital, finance, e-commerce, field service, payments, marketing, messaging, database, storage, and social applications.
- Formulas: Workflows that automate business processes across applications.
- Virtual Data Hubs: Data models that provide a normalized view of “accounts,” “orders,” “payments” or other data objects, allowing companies to manage data they care about in the structure that is optimized for their application or business.
- Conductor: A visual integration feature that allows customer success and professional services teams to build and manage workflow without code. Conductor features an intuitive visual interface for all skill levels, without sacrificing on power and capability.
Insight and Analysis
G2 Crowd has 66 peer reviews of Cloud Elements. Things users liked best: Cloud Elements enables users to handle a few things that otherwise would have been very difficult. The platform fills-in some missing features that some endpoints don’t offer. It also enables users to handle importing large amounts of data, which is particularly important when onboarding new customers. Finally, Cloud Elements makes it much easier to manage the authentication credentials for connecting to each different platform. Another aspect of working with Cloud Elements has been that it is a responsive partner, providing excellent support.
Other insights: Early adopters of the Cloud Elements platform may have some issues. Some of the API hubs are more mature than others, and early adopters didn’t get as much code reuse as they would have liked for subsequent integrations within a hub. Not a difficult problem to solve, however.
Gartner Peer Reviews has 11 verified reviews of Cloud Elements: Users have generally reported that their overall experiences were positive. The sales process went smoothly, and the initial implementations were fairly easy. The only hiccups encountered were with tracking and prioritizing issues and requests. Once users were able to identify where the gaps were, the implementation team immediately established a plan and executed on it. All concerns were taken care of quickly.
eWEEK Score: 4.7/5.0
List of current customers: Cloud Elements’ customer base includes large software platform companies such as SAP, IBM and Axway; independent software vendors like DoubleDutch, FinancialForce, Microstrategy and Sage; financial technology providers such as Danske Bank, FIS, PaySimple and Western Union; and digital business units of large enterprises, such as Dun & Bradstreet and Xerox.
Delivery: SaaS/cloud subscription
Pricing: For pricing information, go here.
Other key players in this market: Mulesoft, Informatica, Dell Boomi, SnapLogic, Jitterbit, Oracle
Contact information for potential customers: cloud-elements.com
Phone: +1.866.830.3456
Email: [email protected]