Amazon AppFlow, a new tool to manage the flow of data from AWS to software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, has been launched by Amazon Web Services (AWS). The tool is built with a predefined purpose to eliminate the need for developers to manually configure connectors that enable them to transfer data between AWS and third-party services such as Zendesk, Trend Micro, Slack, and Salesforce.
AppFlow integrates directly with SaaS applications and automatically enables bidirectional, secure data flow between them. In other words, it can send data from AWS to SaaS applications and allows data to flow from SaaS applications to AWS.
Kurt Kufeld, Vice President of AWS, remarked Amazon AppFlow offers an easy way for customers to combine data from AWS and SaaS apps without moving it across the public internet. Kufeld added our customers bring together and manage petabytes, even exabytes, of data spread across all of their applications – all without having to develop custom connectors or manage underlying API and network connectivity with Amazon AppFlow.
Traditionally, building connectors between multiple applications are time-consuming and labor-intensive that requires developers to create streams of custom code that often take hours – if not days. This is particularly tedious for organizations that want to connect data from different silos and pools that are usually presented in disparate data formats. This leaves developers with a mess of custom codes and connectors that is expensive to maintain as per AWS.
Martin Beeby, the Principal Developer Advocate at AWS wrote in a blog post on the announcement, remarked developers spend huge amounts of time writing custom integrations so they can pass data between SaaS applications and AWS services so that it can be analyzed; these can be expensive and can often take months to complete.
Beeby added costly and complicated modifications that have to be made to the integrations if data requirements change. The Principal Developer Advocate at AWS added organizations that don’t have the luxury of engineering resources might find themselves manually importing and exporting data from applications, which is time-consuming, risks data leakage, and has the potential to introduce human error.
AppFlow works with AWS PrivateLink and encrypts data automatically, meaning traffic stays on the Amazon network instead of using the public internet, reducing its exposure to cyber threats. It is available now with support for S3 and 13 SaaS applications as sources of data, and S3, Snowflake, Amazon Redshift, and Salesforce as destinations. Amazon Web Service has promised compatibility with “hundreds more” applications as the service develops.
