Cloud computing and SaaS platforms are a reality today and they are simple to integrate with open source platforms like Jitterbit and others.

Data Ownership is not an issue with cloud computing; your organization owns its data and any SaaS offering that’s worth using (like Salesforce.com) ensures that access can be strictly controlled. The organization that pays the SaaS vendor will be the owner of that data; he who pays owns – there’s no other way.

Organizations simply need to determine how best to run their business operations and if they need their internal systems to talk to their applications in the cloud then they should be using open source technologies, that are readily available, to design and integrate their business processes.

The vision where there is some central control over an entire enterprise’s data access makes for great white papers, but is simply not implemented across an entire organization; it’s been touted for years and is never a reality.

Different groups within an organization own their applications and when they need to interact with other groups to improve their processes they have tons of options for how to get the work done.

Ownership and accountability — “that requires integration” — traditional integration? Or can the combination of syndication and semantics bridge the cloud?

The inherent issue with traditional lineage and control is that ETL and warehouse vendors still think 1 model, 1 repository is required to achieve organizational data visibility. In some cases, the marketing language even centers around how many connectors are available. Connectors that simply reposition data (and yes shuttling data around the organization and across cloud boundaries is painful – especially when you don’t control the services).

What I am wondering is who is thinking about actively infusing integration technologies with new constructs (such as semantic models) that relish the thought of silos and cloud-based services across the enterprise while still maintaing analytic capabilities?