Salto Seeks to Drive Unification of SaaSOps
Salto, a provider of tools that centralize the management of software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, has added support for five additional platforms.
With the addition of support for Zuora, Jira, Zendesk, Workato, and Stripe applications the total number of SaaS platforms support is now seven with the goal being to get to a total of ten by the end of the year, says Salto CTO Gil Hofer. The platform already supports SaaS applications from Salesforce and NetSuite.
The Salto platform is based on an open source low-code engine dubbed NaCI that the company has wrapped a toolbox around that provides access to a nocode interface through which IT administrators can first capture SaaS application configurations and test changes before applying them. All the configurations are abstracted into a uniform language that eliminates the need for IT teams to master separate management tools for each SaaS application environment, notes Hofer.
Other capabilities being added to the platform include the ability to compare environments, auditing tools, an ability to make large numbers of configuration changes at once, shared spaces to foster collaboration, and support for Git-based repositories commonly used to store configurations in an on-premises IT environment.
Also read: SaaSOps Becomes a Thing in Wake of COVID-19 Pandemic
SaaSOps Goals
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic the number of SaaS applications being employed by organizations has exploded. Many organizations concluded it was simpler to provide employees working from home with access to SaaS applications over a public internet connection than it was to set up and maintain point-to-point connections using a virtual private network (VPN) for each employee. The challenge many of those organizations now face is managing all those SaaS applications, otherwise known as SaaSOps.
Salto is making a case for an integrated platform through which SaaSOps can be more consistently managed using a set of best DevOps practices that are embedded within its management framework, says Hofer.
Also read: APIs Help Streamline SaaS Experience
Workflows Across SaaS Apps
However, managing SaaS applications is only half the battle. Workflows spanning SaaS applications have become disjointed. Many organizations are now investing in low-code tools to create custom workflows spanning multiple SaaS applications as part of a larger digital business transformation initiative. In the meantime, IT environments have become highly fractured, notes Hofer. “IT is starting to look like it did 15 years ago,” he notes.
The degree to which the management of IT has become fragmented will vary widely from one organization to the next. However, it’s clear that there’s going to be a lot more focus on using low-code tools to unify workflows than there is on the management framework employed to unify the management of the applications that make up that workflow. IT teams are, as usual, on their own when it comes to figuring out how to manage a mess that is not necessarily of their own making.
However SaaSOps is achieved, the IT teams that master it will undoubtedly be far better off than IT teams that continue to manage each SaaS application platform that comes along in isolation from all the rest.
