As Jeff Tepper, Microsoft's Corporate VP for OneDrive, SharePoint, and Office noted at the SharePoint Virtual Summit 2017, 40% of all SharePoint sites are still on-premises. Microsoft SharePoint Server is typically used to build intranet and extranet portals, to connect employees with each other, but also with customers, vendors and other business partners for better collaboration. External data integration is a must-have to fully benefit of all the great SharePoint features like personal data views, sorting and grouping, content search, forms, workflows, notifications, mobile access, custom apps, and more.
Market-leading solution for SharePoint data integration
In the last seven years thousands of customers trusted the Layer2 Business Data List Connector to integrate their business-critical corporate data sources with SharePoint. SharePoint contacts, tasks, calendar events, or custom lists are used as a SharePoint-based cache to provide fast and secure access to 100+ supported external data sources like SQL databases, ERP/CRM systems, and others. No programming is required to setup a connection: Simply create a list, provide connection strings and data queries – and background timer jobs are running to automatically keep the data in sync, one-way, or even two-way. The specific list-based approach highly simplifies the SharePoint platform architecture, increases stability and availability, security, performance, and can also save license costs, as users do not directly interfere with the connected systems.
V8 comes with improvements and even more data sources
The new version 8 fully supports the Microsoft SharePoint Server 2016 Feature Pack and comes with some improvements regarding write-back of data changes to the connected sources, improved feature provisioning, and increased performance. While systems like SQL Server, Oracle, IBM DB2, Informix, SAP, Exchange, Dynamics are supported since years, now many additional systems were added. “As social networks have become more and more important over the last years, we are now additionally supporting Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn via 3rd party data providers”, Frank Daske, Product Manager at Layer2 explains the benefits of the product. “We have added some newly available and very popular Cloud Services like Atlassian JIRA, but also some common databases like Progress DB, Mimer SQL, Pervasive PSQL, and HFSQL.”
Similar product available for Office 365 and SharePoint Online
As more than 250,000 organizations and over 85 percent of Fortune 500 companies now have SharePoint as part of Microsoft Office 365, Layer2 also offers the Layer2 Cloud Connector with similar features, but optimized for Microsoft Office 365 and SharePoint Online external data integration.
More than 200 Layer2 resellers and implementation partners
Layer2 SharePoint apps are successfully used by small, mid-sized, and larger companies and organizations around the world like The Coca-Cola Company, Bauer Inc, IBM, Deloitte, the US Defense Department, NATO, United Nations, leading banking groups, and insurance agencies. As part of the Layer2 Partner Program, more than 200 certified regional resellers, VAR partners, and system integrators are ready to support Layer2 customers in almost any country. Partners benefit from up-to 30% discount on product licenses, free NFR licenses for internal use, qualified regional leads, and more. Using Layer2 tools partners can finish SharePoint projects more quickly, with lower cost, and reduced risk.
Free Shareware Edition download after registration
Layer2 prospects can download the Layer2 Business Data List Connector on the vendor’s homepage after registration as a completely free Shareware Edition. Existing customers with Software Assurance profit from the new features with a free product upgrade.
