The world is moving rapidly towards digitization, and new technologies are emerging with the process. This digitization process is now revolving around cloud computing. However, the cloud comes with a high amount of data, and managing this data in a sophisticated way is a complex task.
Along with this, establishing an integrated network that matches the flexibility of on-premises and cloud applications is a major problem for many enterprises today. This problem has opened the way for purpose-built iPaaS services that assist businesses in meeting the integration needs of today’s business environment.
While many companies are running in the cut-throat market of integrated solution providers, Toro Cloud, a leading software solution provider company, is making a stamp of excellence with its best-in-class solutions. Toro cloud provides a single platform to seamlessly integrate and automate the workflow of an organization.
In the following interview, David Brown, the Founder and CEO of Toro Cloud provides detailed insights about his company, its services, and the ever-increasing demand for integration platforms.
Please brief our audience about Toro Cloud, its USPs, and how it is currently positioned as a leading player in the data integration solutions niche.
Toro Cloud, founded in 2014, provides low-code data integration solutions for mid to large enterprises. Today, many enterprises are undergoing a digital transformation by automating processes, communication with customers and business partners electronically, and creating new digital products and services.
Data is the oil that facilitates digital transformation. Managing that data and integrating the systems that contain an organization’s data is a critical component of a digital transformation process.
We like to call our solution “the low code integration platform without limits.” Low code makes developers super productive so that they can keep up with the demands being placed on them by management pushing digital transformation initiatives. It also results in solutions that are easier to update over time as the business requirements change.
However, if a low code solution only gets you 95% of the way and can’t offer the functionality to complete the business requirements then the whole project can fail. Hence, we have developed a low code solution that never places limits on what you can achieve.
Toro Cloud’s data integration platform, Martini, is the #1 Integration Platform as a Service as rated by customer satisfaction on the independent reviews website G2.
What other products/solutions does Toro Cloud offer, and how are these making an impact on the industry and your clients?
Toro Cloud’s product suite Martini, Bellini, and Negroni, provide low-code, API centric solutions for API management, application development, data integration, and workflow automation. Our clients are using these solutions to make their organizations more efficient and respond faster to the demands of the market.
Martini is an Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS). It facilitates integration and automation of data, systems, and business processes. One of the most popular use cases for Martini is application and data integration.
However, users of Martini are also automating business processes (BPA) such as customer onboarding process. They are also using it for Robotic Process Automation (RPA) such as automatically processing PDF invoices received via email and importing them into an accounting system.
Bellini is a Low Code Application Development (LCAD) solution for rapidly creating business applications, dashboards, and reports. Users of Bellini can drag and drop user interface components such as tables, forms, and charts onto a page canvas to build an application or dashboard.
Bellini applications are API centric meaning that each component will display or push data to or from one of the RESTful APIs already in use by your organization. So, you can, for example, drag a chart onto a page and then point it to the API of your CRM system to display sales data over time.
Negroni is the world’s first visual data modeler based on the Common Data Model (CDM). With Negroni, users are deploying standardized data models in their applications and integrations.
Standardizing on common data models enables an organization to abstract a data integration between two or more systems. It is also enabling organizations to provide governance over the way databases are designed for internal application development.
Other than that, we have our own podcast called ‘Coding Over Cocktails’. This podcast series tackles issues faced by enterprises as they manage the process of digital transformation, application integration, low-code application development, data management, and business process automation.
We have had several notable leaders, authors, experts, and influencers in the space to give us their insights and tips to help enterprises navigate these issues as well. It’s available for streaming in most major podcast platforms, including Spotify, Apple, Google Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Stitcher.
Being an experienced leader, share with us your opinion on what impact has the adoption of modern technologies such as AI and machine learning had on the data integration solutions niche and what more could be expected in the future?
The technologies that enable AI, such as cloud-based algorithms, CPU, and storage, are advancing rapidly and becoming increasingly affordable. Companies are increasingly incorporating AI in data integration projects either at the point of ingesting data or for purposes of data analytics.
AI can greatly diminish the heavy lifting often associated with data integration efforts. Data mapping powered by a machine learning algorithm can automate mapping of inputs and outputs. Data processing with machine learning powered data integration tools can parse big data generating precise data models from semi-structured or unstructured data formats.
Taking into consideration the current pandemic, what initial challenges did you face and how did you drive Toro Cloud to sustain operations while ensuring safety of your employees at the same time?
We’ve been holding up well as a company. We were given just 30 minutes’ notice by the local government that a work-from-home order was being put in place the next day. Fortunately, as most of our systems were already online, it was a reasonably easy transition for us.
Since then, we have had team members return to the office and then be forced back into lockdown again. This has forced a flexible work model. I think it’s going to make companies rethink the necessity of having people working from the office full-time and maybe having more flexible approaches to the workplace.
What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the data integration solutions market?
The data integration market is already well-served by platform players like Toro Cloud. However, there are niche opportunities in the data integration solution market targeting specific industry verticals or a specific integration scenario. I would suggest keeping your focus narrow and applying the principles of the lean startup.
How do you envision scaling Toro Cloud’s operations and offerings in the future?
In some respects, COVID-19 has made scaling Toro Cloud’s business model a little easier as people are now used to enterprise sales being conducted remotely via a Zoom call. Toro Cloud will continue to scale our sales model by creating repeatable processes with the content generation that can be reused over and over again.
Our model is to generate sufficient content to allow the customer to conduct a self-evaluation of our product’s fitness for purpose. We are there to guide and help the customer through the process, but we are not there in a heavy-handed traditional enterprise sales role.
About the Leader
Toro Cloud’s Founder and CEO, David Brown, started his career in the software industry in the late 90’s, developing eCommerce solutions. This experience led Brown to establish a successful online retail operation that ended up spanning multiple countries and industry verticals.
Part of the success of this organization was that many systems and processes were automated. The experience gave Brown a passion for creating a software platform that made it simple to build and deploy automated systems and processes within an organization.
