Extension as a Service

The Connect platform is designed to be integrated with various systems and services. Most accounts on the platform (whether it is Vendors, Distributors, or Resellers) are likely to be integrated with one or several systems as schematically illustrated in the following diagram.

As highlighted in the diagram above, these integrations require a specialized “middleware” service that represent an integration layer between third party systems and the CloudBlue Connect platform. Such middleware services are typically referred to as extensions.

In general, extensions are deployed and implemented by system integration teams (system integrators) that work in the context of a particular Connect account. Consequently, system integrators should also build an operational environment as schematically illustrated in the diagram below.

Furthermore, efforts that are required to implement an extension can be allocated into the following financial buckets:

• Development Costs: Efforts that are required to learn the system and develop business logic required to perform the integration operation. These costs is usually expected and don’t cause many issues at this point of time.
• Operational Costs: Efforts that are required to build an operational environment and use it to run the integration itself on a daily basis.

These costs are mostly unexpected and cause issues since few system integration teams have relevant experience to accomplish this task in the first place. Therefore, CloudBlue Connect presents an ultimate solution to drastically decrease operational costs for deploying and implementing required extensions. The Connect platform provides the users with an operational environment as a service, hence the term Extension as a Service.