Jitterbit Releases Version 1.2 for ERP, CRM Integration

Jitterbit, Inc., a vendor of open source integration productivity software, has announced the general release of Jitterbit 1.2, what company officials call a "major upgrade to its Jitterbit business integration" product.

Jitterbit 1.2's new features include plug-in functionality that lets users customize their products and comprehensive software-as-a-service (SaaS (News - Alert)) application connectivity. A revamped formula builder also aids intuitive data manipulation. These upgrades make the Jitterbit platform more flexible and extendable, company officials say, and provide "significant productivity gains."

With Jitterbit, users and developers can connect customer data from a variety of sources and formats, such as local and hosted ERP and CRM applications, legacy systems, data warehouses and online marketplaces.

"Every organization manages their data a little differently, so every integration is unique in some way," said Ilan Sehayek, CTO of Jitterbit. "Proprietary software companies lack the bandwidth and incentive to support every single user requirement and this leaves many customers out in the cold."

With plug-ins, the open source community can easily add new functionality to meet their individual needs, such as a specific type of security encryption, alternative data cleansing mechanisms or event-based triggers to launch other in-house applications.

Industry observer Andy Oram explains that "the business of Jitterbit is integration, a headache in nearly any organization large enough to bring in software systems from outside. For instance, you may be managing your products through an ERP system while storing product development information in a relational database."

And "Integration doesn’t just mean 'make SugarCRM work with MySQL,'" Oram says: "You will have a particular data set in SugarCRM and another data set in MySQL that you want to tie together. The task may be as simple as telling the systems that the field called Employees in one is called Staff in another. Or it may require complex filtering, as when the date formats used by systems differ."

Jitterbit 1.2 also includes more comprehensive built-in support for web services and SaaS connectivity, such as Salesforce.com's (News - Alert) new Apex API. Currently, some organizations that use SaaS applications struggle with integration and often have to resort to problematic scripting products.

"When companies adopt an on-demand model, they suddenly face the complex challenge of sharing data between their internal systems and their applications beyond the firewall," said Sharam Sasson, president and CEO of Jitterbit. "As spending on on-demand ERP and CRM products continues to experience double-digit growth*, we've seen increasing customer demand for flexible, affordable integration products, and we expect this trend to continue over the next five years."

Analyst firm Gartner has predicted that 25 percent of new business software will be delivered as a service by 2011 and analyst firm IDC (News - Alert) lists the current SaaS market at $8 billion annually.

To download the latest version of Jitterbit, please visit www.jitterbit.com.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMC (News - Alert) Net.  For more articles please visit David Sims' columnist page.

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