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Abstract
Sage is committed to providing businesses around the world the information, insight and
tools they need to succeed.
The modern landscape of cloud and on-premise solutions offers an abundance of data,
services and applications. To provide the best solutions for Sage customers, we need to
allows partners to easily manage, market and integrate their products and services with
Sage product and allow us to provide more integrations, allowing customers to build the
optimal solution for their business needs.
The Sage Integration Cloud delivers on this vision and helps partners accelerate
integrations with Sage products by leveraging a comprehensive, standardized ecosystem.
This white paper describes the Sage Integration Cloud functionality, components and
available options.
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Challenge
Sage provides global cloud accounting, payroll and payments products and services as well
as solutions for specialized business needs, markets and verticals. To facilitate a federated
ecosystem of Sage solutions in conjunction with a wide variety of partner offerings, Sage
needs to provide solutions and tools for partners to engage with Sage, efficiently create and
maintain integrations as well as customer-facing systems, allowing businesses to discover,
select and manage a solution that fits their business requirements and processes.
Sage Integration Cloud
The Sage Integration Cloud is not a single component, but a complete end-to-end solution
that goes beyond basic data exchange, encompassing partner engagement, sales,
development, marketing, discovery and maintenance as well as solution discovery,
provisioning and management for customers. It provides enabling technology, backend
systems and user interfaces combined into a platform to enable the engagement between
partners, customers and Sage teams.
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Figure 1 - Sage Integration Cloud Overview
Sage Product APIs
The prerequisite for an open, federated system is the availability of modern REST APIs
allowing access to the data and functionality provided by Sage products. Sage One (for
micro to small businesses), Sage Live (for small to medium businesses) and Sage X3 (for
medium businesses and above) currently already provide rich APIs. Sage is evolving the
existing APIs for all of these products to further enhance the supported functionality,
scalability and security to prepare these solutions for additional growth.
Sage One is adding a new Version 3 API, allowing simplified security and unified access to
functionality provided for different countries through one common contract. Sage Live will
provide Version 2 APIs that provide better validation and exception handling and allow for
exchanging more related data using fewer API calls. Sage X3 makes functionality previously
accessible only through rich SOAP APIs and additional functions providing enhanced
capabilities to expose custom data and workflows now also accessible through REST APIs.
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For those customers using on-premise and hybrid or private cloud product installations,
Sage will provide the on-premise connector cloud service which enables both real-time as
well as synchronization and offline access for data and operations via cloud REST APIs. A
connector component is installed where the customer data resides, i.e. on a customer
server, private or hybrid cloud host. The connector establishes a link to the cloud service
using secured, outbound standard HTTPs connectivity, eliminating the need for special
firewall configuration.
The Sage integration cloud service exposes rich, common REST APIs for accounting, human
resource and payroll functions, leveraging a common contract that does not depend on the
data structures and flow used in any particular on-premise product; this enables partners
consuming the API to integrate with several Sage products through a single API.
To improve cloud service characteristics, Sage is utilizing Microsoft API Management and
gateways to manage, protect, secure and monitor publicly accessible REST APIs; Sage Live
APIs are utilizing Salesforce platform capabilities. This ensures that application resources
are protected to prevent impact of API use on user experience and helps prevent attacks
against core applications by (unauthorized) hackers or through mistakes caused by
authorized consumers.
API Portal
To make APIs accessible to partners, they need to be discoverable, documented and easily
testable. Sage is consolidating documentation for all REST APIs into a single API portal,
driven by a common contract definition format, relying on standards such as the OpenAPI
Specification (previously Swagger).
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The portal allows partners to discover and browse API specifications for all key Sage
products and versions, register their applications and obtain access keys. It also provides a
console for developers to interactively invoke the APIs using sample data or data in
organizations the user’s account has access to. In the future, the portal will also add self-
service functionality for partners to monitor API usage and revoke access for specific keys,
e.g. in the event that partner applications or environments have been compromised.
Sage Integration Platform
While an API allows partners (or Sage solutions) to communicate with a specific target
product, it requires that the adopting product has specific embedded code or an integration
module containing the integration logic and flow. This logic is specific to an API and can
usually not be reused for integrations with multiple targets. (See “Legacy” in Figure 1)
To simplify integrations, Sage has partnered with Cloud Elements to provide a leading
integration platform as a service (iPaaS) to enable Sage and partners to build integrations
with a shorter time-to-market compared to creating custom-coded solutions. Use of the
integration platform creates new delivery options for partners.
One such option is for applications to call into Hub APIs instead of product-specific
endpoints. Hubs homogenize the consumption of APIs for a specific domain by taking care
of endpoint discovery, user-level authentication, providing a shared URL syntax for
common resources and leveraging a common query language, regardless of the targeted
product or API. Consumers do not have to e.g. implement Salesforce OAuth authentication
and discovery / SOQL (Salesforce) queries for Sage Live and Sage ID OAuth authentication /
SData queries for Sage One. (See “Alternative” in Figure 1)
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A new option enabled by the platform is the creation of integrations between any external
applications that have an existing API and Sage applications without the need for any code,
integration module, release of a new version or deployment of any kind on either end,
simply by running the integration logic consuming the Sage and partner APIs on the
integration cloud provided by Sage / Cloud Elements (See “Primary” in Figure 1).
The platform provides a complete development environment that is available to Sage and
partners to design and create API adapters (“elements”), transformations and
workflows/logic (“formulas”) to compose integrations either using visual designers or
standard JavaScript for more advanced use cases. This option, leveraging APIs for Sage and
partner products, retains control flow and logic inside the iPaaS platform, making it easy to
update and maintain for partners.
Once integrations are created, they can be used as “templates” to deploy to a large number
of Sage customers. All components run on the iPaaS platform and Sage and Cloud Elements
provide the necessary infrastructure to run many instances of the integrations for all Sage
customers, maintaining security, reliability and availability.
This “Primary” option is the recommended choice going forward and those integrations
created using this model benefit from being discoverable in the Sage Integration Cloud user
portal and allow users to easily add and configure the product connection through a self-
service web application.
Integrations can be created by Sage (for select partners) or ISV partners and made available
to all Sage customers. Additionally, system integrators, consultants and integration partners
have the option to create customer-specific or highly customizable implementations –
including e.g. “one-off” integrations with customer legacy backend systems or non-Sage
solutions.
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ISV partners only pay a low, flat monthly fee to Cloud Elements for using the platform to
develop their integration components and publish their proprietary elements (i.e.
connectors to their API), but Sage covers the cost of running integrations for all customers;
there is no per-customer/month cost for the ISV related to usage or number of integrations.
For customer-specific integrations created by system integrators, consultants or integration
partners, Cloud Elements will bill the partner or customer based on the current pricing
model, but applying a substantial discount for Sage partners and customers.
Sage provides elements and hubs for cloud products as well as the portal and on-premise
connectivity free of charge to all partners, customers and Cloud Elements customers.
Marketplace
Customers are able to discover available partner product integrations through the
marketplace, a public, searchable repository maintained by Sage. All products from ISV
partners are with integrations to Sage products are listed in the marketplace.
Currently the Marketplace provides descriptions of available Sage and partner products and
services, supporting filtering by category, Sage product and integration availability.
Future versions of the marketplace will offer ratings and advanced filter capabilities to
allow customers to narrow down options by specific features and regions supported by the
listed solutions.
Sage Integration Cloud User Portal
Once a user has selected a product in the marketplace, they will be guided through the
provisioning and setup of the product and have the opportunity to configure the integration
with their Sage solution. The web portal allows users to connect to their Sage product(s),
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log into the partner solution to authorize the solution to access the data from their Sage
product and configure settings relevant to the integration data and flow. The portal will also
be directly accessible from within most Sage products, allowing users to view compatible
products and proceed to create and configure an integration.
Once the configuration is complete, the data exchange process typically runs unattended in
the background, triggered by actions in either product or scheduled to run periodically,
depending on the chosen integration. The portal pages allow customers to examine the
integration status, disable connections or modify integration parameters.
The Sage Integration Cloud portal supports automated deployment and configuration of
integrations that were built using the Sage Integration Platform provided by Cloud
Elements.
Sage Partner Community & Tools
All services available to partners will be consolidated into a global partner community site,
built on the Salesforce platform. The first release supports global products in US English
only, but is open to all new partners, regardless of partner type (i.e. resellers, ISVs,
implementation partners etc.) or tier; future deliveries extend the offering to all partners,
additional products and languages.
To support partnership management and marketing, the site allows users to enroll and on-
board into the partner program, providing access to Sage Partner Program (SPP) details and
marketing content for global products.
Reseller partners can manage leads and referrals via an integration with the Sage
Amplifinity platform (initially available for Sage Live only).
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Chatter discussion forums and messaging allow business managers, sales users,
implementation consultants and developers to directly engage with Sage.
ISVs and developers find integration implementation guides, technical API and product
information, links to the API portal and case management and support functions to report
issues to Sage and check on the request status.
Future versions of the partner community extend the functionality to allow open forums,
additional sales functions, deep integration for developers, the ability to manage customer
data, extended reposting and analytics (including referral statistics and payments) and
enable submitting Sage Marketplace product listing or change requests.
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Conclusion
The Sage Integration Cloud initiative provides a comprehensive, holistic solution comprised
of services, tools and technologies for Sage partners, supporting development, marketing,
sales, management and finance functions.
Customers benefit by having a multitude of services to choose from that can they can add to
existing Sage solutions.
Developers and ISVs can significantly accelerate implementation of integrations by
leveraging new APIs, the Sage Integration Cloud portal, services and the (iPaaS) integration
platform Sage provides in cooperation with Cloud Elements.
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Appendix:
Customer Quick Facts
The Sage Integration Cloud Portal Easily Integrates Many (Sage and Partner) Applications
No Charge for Integrations, Services Directly Billed by Sage or Partners
Discover and Configure Connectable Products, Start from Your Sage Application
Sage and Partners Create and Maintain Integrations
Backed by Reliable Platform (Cloud Elements), Sage Security, Monitoring, Support
Partner Quick Facts
Standard Integrations (Using Sage Integration Cloud Portal)
Fewer Specialized Skills, Lower Cost to Create & Maintain
Build Integration on CloudElements, iPaaS – Sage Provisions and Operates
No Per-Customer / Usage Fees for ISVs / Partners
Small Fee to Support Development of Integrations (Elements)
Significantly Easier to Integrate with Multiple Sage Products (On-Prem and Cloud)
Custom Integrations
Custom or Legacy Systems Integration (e.g. Implementation Partners)
Low Effort, Leverage Available Elements and Formulas for Sage and Third-Party
Systems
Reduced Sage Partner Pricing for use of CloudElements iPaaS
