With 4,000+ technology vendors, marketers are having a hard time staying current with the exciting possibilities unleashed with technology. Technology proliferation means that customer data is fragmented across different systems. Without an unified view of operational data, marketers struggle to tailor their marketing messages.

How do you achieve a unified view of customer interactions across cloud and on-premises? You can only embrace data driven marketing if you can integrate data across your various systems like Marketo, Salesforce, Google Analytics, WebEx, HootSuite, Quickbooks, Zendesk, and SurveyMonkey.

Marketers need to integrate platforms to access better data, says @csklar https://t.co/9C7C4CD5Jp #MarketingOps pic.twitter.com/fbvTGmnAny

— Simple (@SimpleHQ) January 26, 2016

Definition. Enter cloud integration vendors or integration platform as a service (iPaaS). Gartner defines integration platform as a service as a suite of “cloud services enabling development, execution and governance of integration flows connecting any combination of on premises and cloud-based processes, services, applications and data within individual or across multiple organizations.”

Cloud integration vendors unify data across business and operational systems. Integration tools push and pull data across sources in a consumable format without manual processes or stand-alone spreadsheets. Cloud integration tools help marketers view all their data in one place and provide visibility on business metrics across the customer acquisition journey.

A4: #Marketingops & #salesops are champions, but everyone who touches customer and prospect data are responsible #martechchat

— Jonathan Burg (@Jonmburg) February 19, 2015

Why This Matters. IDC has found that marketing technology integration is “operationally and economically burdensome.” According to SearchCRM, customer data can “easily become out-of-date and out-of-sync among various systems”. Marketers can make sense of large data sets across channels, tools, and devices with cloud integration tools.

60% of companies have an overall data health of “unreliable”! Check out #marketingops challenges http://t.co/yOTBfUpgaO via @integrate

— Ledger Bennett DGA (@LB_DGA) October 9, 2015

What To Look For. Ask the following questions from prospective cloud integration vendors:

1. Does the tool provide deep integration capabilities across your marketing ecosystem?
2. Can you push and pull data across cloud based and on-premises systems?
3. Can you set up integrations between data sources without IT support?
4. Can you validate, filter, and cleanse data across systems?
5. Can you customize integration scenarios based on your specific use cases?
6. What is the vendor’s approach for maintaining data security and confidentiality?

Sponsors. Meet with five cloud integration vendors at the 2016 MarTech conference:

Dell Boomi is a shared-everything, multi-tenant platform that supports cloud-to-cloud, SaaS-to-SaaS, cloud-to-on-premises, on-premises-to-on-premises and B2B integration.

Bedrock Data integrates your business systems and platforms to get your data talking.

LiveRamp help marketers eliminate data silos and unlock greater value from the tools they use every day.

Openprise enables business users to create do-it-yourself automation for the purposes of system integration, process automation, data quality, and analysis.

Usermind empowers business users in marketing, sales, support, and finance to automate the customer journey across disconnected apps and disparate data structures.