SnapLogic

My main use case for SnapLogic is integration with other systems, and I also use SnapLogic to replace a lot of our older systems that require integration.

A specific integration I set up with SnapLogic that made a significant difference for my team is called SGM, which is a Stanford Group Manager. It was originally written in Java and worked on a very old server, so instead of migrating the code and the technology to a new server, I redeveloped it using SnapLogic. Once I redeveloped it using SnapLogic, the integration part lagged a bit, so I still had to use some Java, especially for the integration with Active Directory. Even though SnapLogic provided resources and snaps for that, it was still inefficient.

Additionally, I had to integrate new harvesters, which are the logic side where they post events and process them. As SnapLogic matured, I rewrote part of that to spawn duplicate processes to execute and run a lot of the back-end integration, really cutting down on time, and as SnapLogic continues improving and I learn more about it, I continue to upgrade our current systems to make them more efficient and outperform a lot of our old systems.

One other benefit about my main use case with SnapLogic is the harvesters, which went through about four or five revisions before I created a standard template snap where I could use a property file to achieve the same information instead of repeating the pipelines or projects. Therefore, when someone does a request and they need this simple integration, I retrieve some information from a get and then post the information to a downstream system that could have multiple authentications, which I can now do all within a property file. This enables me to spin up a new harvester in SnapLogic within half a day, saving a lot of time.

I think the best feature SnapLogic offers overall is seamless integration. I basically only have to ensure I have all the right credentials to hook up a database, and therefore I don't have to write any of the JDBC that I had to do in Java for a connection. Other features I discovered include the versatility of authentication, though not all types of authentication are still available, and I look forward to seeing this improve so I can migrate other old applications over to SnapLogic.

SnapLogic positively impacts my organization by allowing me to do more application development integration in less time. However, when something brand new starts, there is still a big learning curve on how to implement it and streamline and use the features as best as possible. SnapLogic keeps improving, and as it improves, I have to go back and redesign slightly on our pipelines to make use of all these new snaps, leading to retrofitting that takes time.

I think SnapLogic can be improved by implementing more seamless logging of information. Currently, this is done through an error, but it would be best to have logging available on each snap that you can turn on and off, allowing you to configure a logging mechanism for where it logs. By having each snap available for logging, you can log all the information instead of creating a separate pipeline for logging.

Additionally, I suggest caching for snaps that are recursively called, particularly when logging in, authenticating, doing actions, logging out, and then repeating the process, which would significantly speed up operations, especially when querying an Active Directory because retrieving many members in Java takes about five seconds, whereas in SnapLogic, it takes a minute and a half for the same operation.

Regarding the new dedupe snap, I think the default setting should be changed from the current 80% match to an exact match, allowing for changes afterward, as I ran into issues during regression testing where a minor difference led to duplicates being flagged unintentionally.

I have been using SnapLogic for about seven years now.

SnapLogic is about 90% stable in my experience. There are times when snaps fail for unknown reasons, and sometimes after an upgrade, SnapLogic itself becomes unstable, but overall, it holds a 90% stability rate.

I believe SnapLogic's scalability is defined by our available budget. The more budget we have, the more resources we can obtain, hence allowing our pipelines and work to expand, making it challenging to assess without considering other external conditions.

I find customer support for SnapLogic to be top-notch, particularly with Dwayne. Most support from Zendesk has been very helpful, although some others are less so, as we often push SnapLogic beyond its limits, which leads to suggestions for improvements and inquiries about their design.

Overall, I would rate customer support ten out of ten. Due to Dwayne's involvement, I would even consider going past ten, given his strong interest in our work.

The solution I used before SnapLogic was Java, which was the only option available at the time for doing all the work.

I was not involved in the SnapLogic evaluation. When I joined, it was just in its infancy, and I went through the training while management made the decision to use it.

My advice for others looking into using SnapLogic is to anticipate a learning curve regarding the features currently available, as there are many ways to accomplish various tasks. It is best to take the training and engage with others who use SnapLogic to gather insights on achieving different functionalities since there is always room for improvement. I would rate this product an eight out of ten.

My main use case for SnapLogic involves replacing old ETL functions, improving data flow, and enhancing efficiencies, business processes, and data quality across the enterprise.

A specific example of how I am using SnapLogic to improve a particular business process or data flow is that we have been able to go directly to subject matter experts and, through complete requirements-based discovery, rebuild, replace, and improve entire business functions very simply, quickly, and in ways that we were not previously able to do. Some functions that had been static and out of date for three, four, five years have been able to be turned around completely within a matter of weeks. The entire previous ETL architecture has been replaced within 12 months from when we started.

It is very easy to adapt to SnapLogic. It is very user-friendly. People who have not used the product with previous experience of any kind have been able to pick up and deliver most of this internally within the last year. While we have had a lot of external help from SnapLogic themselves, it has been a revelation compared to older, legacy ETL functions.

The best features SnapLogic offers include its ability to connect to almost anything. It has snaps for any function that you want to do with the data on the way in, which means we do not have to limit what our users want the requirements to include based on technical limitations, and we are able to work really quickly.

The ability to connect broadly and work fast has changed the way my teams operate by allowing us to unify a lot of data more easily without manual intervention, which previously took dozens of hours a week from certain staff members. Regardless of format, location, and means of accessing data, everything can be brought in by SnapLogic with as little manual data processing as we would like it to be. While we try to retain a human in the loop, we have significantly reduced the amount of manual labor for almost every integration.

SnapLogic has positively impacted my organization by costing a lot less than our previous ETLs, saving about 50 percent of our running costs without having done anything, just by using SnapLogic. We are able to engage with people and make promises that we can keep, and we can mitigate a lot of risk knowing that the functionality of the tool allows us not to have to worry about whether or not we can solve problems. We delivered more in the last year than what was previously deliverable in the last three or four years, and we have completely mitigated the risks of a failing and out-of-service ETL being used for primary data migration functions at the organization. Thus, we see risk mitigation, cost-cutting, and process improvements across the board, and most of these are very tangible to those who are subject matter experts in the areas we work with.

I see very few areas where SnapLogic needs improvement. There are some very fringe cases we have had to abandon due to minor complexity and time pressures, such as the ability to read a PDF and isolate tagged data areas on that PDF to extract data, which we did not find very easy to start with. However, we had the limitation of needing to turn this around in a matter of days, so we did not have time to investigate further. Other than that, I find it very difficult to identify areas for improvement; I think it is pretty industry-leading as far as these tools go. Comparing it to other products, I believe the return on investment has been met within a year and then some, whereas previously we wasted a lot of money trying to deliver the same things. Therefore, I have no real notes at this point, but I think consistent evolution is essential, and I look forward to seeing what they do next.

Support has been exemplary.

I have been using SnapLogic for 13 months.

SnapLogic is extremely stable.

SnapLogic's scalability is extremely reliable. We have built solutions that we have expanded to deliver higher volumes of data with the same pipelines, and we are able to iterate and expand on existing pipelines to deliver new functionality through simple Jira tickets without reinventing the wheel or starting whole projects to deliver change. Its self-documenting nature allows us to understand what was previously built and how to improve on it. The ability for us to refer back to the requirements we established through our recent work with SnapLogic strengthens the connection between the business processes and SnapLogic's role in allowing us to see the whole picture when looking at scaling.

Customer support is outstanding across all levels, including marketing, account management, and technical support, which are each individually and separately brilliant.

I previously used a different solution, initially Scribe, which reached end of life. We tried to use Talend, which did not meet our requirements. It was far too complex and lacked the user-friendly nature we needed; we relied on external developers to build our pipelines, adding significant extra costs on top of maintenance expenses. Therefore, when looking at cost savings, it must also include the amount we do not spend on external developers, which was substantial.

While we have had a lot of external help from SnapLogic themselves, it has been a revelation compared to older, legacy ETL functions.

I have shared some relevant metrics indicating that our previous ETL functions totaled around 120,000 pounds of commitment every year, while our SnapLogic commitment is less than half of that, providing an immediate return on investment. The pipeline function has also removed a lot of manual effort required, and while it has not reduced the number of employees we want to keep, it has allowed those employees to work on things that are more meaningful to the organization.

My company evaluated other options before choosing SnapLogic, but I do not know which ones since it occurred prior to my engagement with SnapLogic. However, I know that there were very few competitive alternatives that delivered anything close to what SnapLogic does.

My advice to others looking into using SnapLogic is to ensure that you upskill, train, and identify members of internal staff who can be used as developers on the product. The usability of SnapLogic far exceeds that of other products, which allows you to save a lot of money by using internal people along with the support and onboarding that SnapLogic provides. We did this with a few people, and it would have been better for us to do it with more internal staff because trusting them to take on development responsibilities is a great opportunity for upskilling, career development, and reducing development costs. I also recommend understanding as much of your existing environment and what can be replaced quickly before implementation to enable rapid wins and quick returns on investment.

Regarding SnapLogic's AI capabilities, I think its governance and security are areas I am not particularly close to in my day-to-day. The assurances and introductions we have been given make the trust in that very reliable. We make small use of AI in the SnapGPT snap functionality as well as in giving guidance on how to build pipelines, but we have not yet accessed larger-scale AI utilization. Thus, it has become less relevant than we expected immediately, but this may be something to engage with in the future. Therefore, I do not really have much to say about it, except that it seems reliable, and there is no reason not to trust it.

Regarding SnapLogic's AI capabilities, the accuracy and reliability of output, especially with features such as SnapGPT or pipeline guidance, in the small cases we have used it, have been reliable in almost every instance. I think as we deliver more complex work in the future that I cannot yet comment on, it may become something where I need to give more detail, but at this point, I think it is great.

SnapLogic is deployed in our organization using the cloud. I am not exactly sure which type because I was not involved in the implementation, but we access SnapLogic through the portal and have several snap engines running to deliver the work we are doing. Another member of my team who will be giving this review will be able to contribute more on this area.

I was not directly involved with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing, but I am, as the enterprise architect, the owner of all comparative data of cost and licenses and contracts we have across our ETL tools. SnapLogic is very competitive, and we found the bespoke and charity discounted options available extremely generous and suitable for our needs.

I would rate this review a 10 out of 10.

Our main use case for SnapLogic is the integration of student data, some finance data, and some internal Stanford data processes.

A specific example of how I use SnapLogic for integrating student or finance data is when new staff, students, or faculty join Stanford; they have to be added to different workgroups or their email has to be set up, so many processes are done via SnapLogic integration. On the finance side, it involves processing data related to the Office of Development, where some gift processing happens. Multiple teams at Stanford, including the School of Business, use SnapLogic for tasks such as booking meeting rooms.

We use SnapLogic for various integration purposes, including integration from Salesforce to Oracle, from flat files to Oracle, and integration from FileMaker to Oracle, among others. Although many more integrations are running as pipelines, these are a few I can recall as an infrastructure team member.

The best features SnapLogic offers are its ease of development for pipelines, where the authentication and account configuration are straightforward, and it allows for easy connections to sources and targets, as well as simple transformations and making multiple copies of the same data. I find the development part very easy, especially from an infrastructure perspective, since we host all Snaplexes on-premises servers; upgrades are seamless, and the impact on pipelines during rolling upgrades is minimal.

The development interface is user-friendly, making the process of connecting to sources straightforward, especially when setting up accounts using any Snap or API, which allows anyone to use it easily. Making configuration changes or moving servers between environments is also very easy.

SnapLogic has positively impacted our organization by providing an alternative to Informatica, which was challenging due to licensing and other issues. With SnapLogic, we can now connect to various SaaS and cloud products, and its usage has spread across different departments, making it a central tool for both on-cloud and on-premises ETL processes.

Areas for improvement for SnapLogic include enhancing the documentation, especially by providing more complex examples in each Snappack, to cover various use cases that different team members may encounter.

Another improvement I suggest is enhancing the monitor page on the dashboard to allow quicker and more efficient access to historical data, as it currently becomes slow and sometimes hangs when accessing older data.

I have been using SnapLogic for six to seven years.

I have been using SnapLogic for a while, and I believe the tool has become more stable, although there are still monitoring features I have had to build on my own. More robust APIs would assist anyone looking to automate processes.

My advice for others looking into using SnapLogic is to participate in training sessions provided by SnapLogic support, which can significantly help new users understand the UI and its functions through self-learning videos. I would rate my overall experience with SnapLogic a 9 out of 10.