A new Amazon Web Services (AWS) solution aims to give organizations an easier way to transfer data from their various software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications to the AWS cloud.
Amazon AppFlow is compatible with a growing number of SaaS applications (13 at the time of writing). This allows data to flow securely between those applications and AWS solutions like Amazon S3 or Amazon Redshift. This service replaces traditional methods of transferring data between third-party SaaS apps. These methods can be labor-intensive and time-consuming, not to mention expensive.
AWS announced Wednesday that custom integrations are a time-consuming task that developers use to pass data between SaaS apps and AWS services. These can be costly and can take months to complete. “If data requirements change, then expensive and complex modifications to the integrations are required. Companies without the engineering resources may have to manually import and export data from applications. This is time-consuming and can lead to data leakage.
Amazon AppFlow automates data transfer from SaaS applications to AWS and vice versa. You can choose to have transfers performed at specific times or in regular intervals.
Amazon AppFlow provides options for mapping, filtering and merging data with each transfer. This allows data to be formatted quickly without additional steps. AWS explained that each transfer can be as large at 100GB. This means that organizations don’t have to break down data into smaller batches.
Amazon AppFlow encrypts all data in motion. However, as an additional security measure, SaaS apps that have a standing integration to AWS PrivateLink can transfer data to AWS without it being exposed to the public Internet.
Current supported SaaS apps include Trend Micro, Slack and Salesforce. AWS expects to add “hundreds” more in the future. More information is available here.
