Ever since software systems have been around, people have been working to connect them together to get added benefit.  Sometimes that leads to large integrated all-in-one systems, sometimes it leads to efforts to standardise API’s and communications protocols and it almost always leads to lots of professional services.

In the cloud though, that’s changing.  One of the most innovative companies I have seen is Boomi (now Dell Boomi).   Their website does a better job of explaining their value proposition, but essentially it translates communications between systems – kind of like the Babel Fish (from HHGTTG), but for software.