Blog: How JDA Scaled Its SaaS Supply Chain Business with Embedded Integration

Data transfer to and from customers is key to providing a SaaS offering, and as a SaaS provider’s customer base grows, so does the demand for protocols and connectors that can deliver modern and reliable data exchange. As the worldwide leader in supply chain management, manufacturing, and retail planning software, Arizona-based JDA Software knows a thing or two about trying to keep up with that demand.

It’s critical for a SaaS company such as JDA to not only efficiently connect to its customers, but also manage its internal data flows that drive its cloud service. But a high-growth strategy meant the volumes of data flowing through its business ecosystem – and its B2B and cloud integration needs – were at all-time highs.

JDA’s customers require up-to-the-second service as they manage the flow of goods through the supply chain, from raw materials to manufacturing to customer delivery. If a piece of information isn’t where it’s supposed to be or isn’t on time, however, customers don’t have the most-up-to-date service to effectively compete, which can result in crippling credibility and reputational damage to JDA.

JDA’s pieced-together file transfer and integration “strategy” had put its thriving business at risk of increased downtime, missed SLAs, customer churn, and thus, lost revenue. But the software giant found a solution in a fellow software company’s cutting-edge embedded integration technology.

What is Embedded Integration?

Cloud-based organizations like JDA and the services they offer are highly reliant on the ability to ingest data from the businesses they service, the ability to process the received information as part of a securely well-orchestrated workflow, and the ability to provide responses in a way that is accessible to the businesses using those services.

But it’s not easy. JDA and similar companies must connect customer systems to its own internal systems, which are connected to lots of other applications and systems. These business relationships often demand various ground-to-cloud and cloud-to-cloud integration scenarios, and the customer side also might have existing ad-hoc integrations. That these technologies don’t natively communicate with each other also complicates things and is where SaaS companies have trouble taking on new business.

Embedded integration, an advanced cloud integration mechanism, solves this growing problem. Embedded integration means the B2B tools and capabilities to connect customer systems (whether on-premise or in the cloud) and create a secure data transfer gateway are built right into the SaaS solution architecture. The result is a more seamless customer interaction via faster, more reliable information exchanges.

With thousands of customers across the world, getting data to and from JDA’s customers while quickly moving it throughout its geo-distributed data center network required just such a solution.

About JDA

In the fast-moving and highly competitive supply chain management space, JDA prides itself on being an organization that’s easy to do business with, as evidenced by its more than 4,000 customers and record growth. But that commitment requires the organization to stay flexible and agile while onboarding new customers, something that was being challenged by its rapid expansion.

JDA was experiencing a booming 20 percent year-over-year growth in its cloud business, which meant it was executing tens of millions of transactions per day – representing billions in e-commerce orders. A side effect of its increasing business, JDA’s cadre of file transfer and integration solutions could not scale to support such growth and still meet customer SLAs.

With the volume of data that required secure and reliable migration growing unwieldy, JDA sought a modern managed file transfer (MFT) and integration backbone for its growing cloud supply chain services, one that could:

• Consolidate its incumbent integration technologies onto a single platform
• Support database replication as part of its disaster recovery (DR) strategy
• Move massive data assets to and from geo-distributed data centers
• Seamlessly interoperate with existing infrastructure

JDA now leverages an advanced embedded integration technology platform and provides greater business value to its customers with:

• A single integration solution that supports all business data movement use cases
• A highly available multi-protocol gateway for diverse customer communications
• High-speed file transfer to move large files and massive data sets
• Data center replication to support redundancy and DR plans

“The Cleo solutions delivered the security and reliability necessary to successfully support a global supply chain management operation,” said John Frazier, former vice president of cloud services, JDA Software Group. “Cleo’s single-platform technology enables JDA and its dynamic customer base to manage their supply chain services now and into the future.”

While other SaaS companies are grappling with piecemealed data exchange strategies, JDA is busy gaining further market share with robust integration technology.