SSIS , Azure , Sync Framework = Economic solution for synchronization business

SSIS is independently famous as an ETL tool, but often a tool is a good as the purpose it can cater. Often integration is just a piece of the entire process, that hands over the delivered output to the next runner of the relay race.

In today's competitive and budget economy, one of the biggest challenges that architecture designs as well as project costs face are CAPEX ( Capital Expenditure ) and OPEX ( Operational Expenditure ). If you have underutilized resources and your architecture design is such that it can raise CAPEX and/or OPEX over a period of time, it's definitely going to fail when a RFP (Request for Proposal) is sent to the client. To gain competitive edge, today's architecture design propositions necessarily needs to have dual flavors - one in the traditional way and another which includes a cloud based economy design. Cloud involvement as a platform or as a component in the solution design is the only most promising way to provide a competitive edge to your propositions. In a typical microsoft platform solution, in my views, the primary cloud choice is Amazon EC2 and Azure platform is gaining adoption and popularity gradually.

Sync Framework is one of the robust mechanisms to synchronize data across boundaries spanning networks / systems / machines. This framework can be integrated very well with .NET applications, effectively synchronization of a variety of data can be catered by this framework. A very common example is to synchronize backup of a database across geographically separate systems where each terminal need to synchronize from a common master backup of the database.

Now if we join this separate piece of the puzzle, it can form a solution to a very big business that can be seen in almost every enterprise. Huge multinational corporations often have various companies operating under a single umbrealla, for eg. CitiGroup may have CitiBank, CitiCorp, CitiSecurities etc.. each having their own business, and each company might be implementing different IT systems from legacy to cloud based. A few of these might be occasionally connected system to a central CitiGroup headquaters which might be storing centralized key data summarizing all business and geographies.

1) SSIS can be used to provide the first level of integration for each independent child company. The central controlling office might need to gather data and even the child companies might need to receive different kinds of data from the central office. These child companies might be occasionally connected or dedicatedly connected to the head office.

2) After SSIS has kept the parcel ready, Azure platform i.e. cloud can be used as a distribution network. Cloud is an economic choice, considering the time for which storage might be required for occasionally connected systems. Also Windows Azure Content Distribution Network can be utilized to replicate this data near to the geography of the child offices / businesses.

3) Sync Framework supports cloud as a data source (to the best of my knowledge). Storage and retrieval on the cloud can be controlled by sync framework, to customize the kind of replication and synchronization required for each particular businesses.

4) One can hook a .NET application and keep a monitor on these processes. Also if required, Sharepoint can be used for a collaborative control and monitoring of these processes.

Every enterprise need one or another kind of replication and synchronization of data, and using SSIS, Azure and Sync Framework (optionally), solution providers can exploit the hidden businesses that lies in every enterprise. I would be interested to hear on this viewpoint from Sales folks, especially those who deal in MS BI business.