Apatar, a vendor of open source data mashups, has announced the availability of the Apatar Data Integration solution on Salesforce.com's (News - Alert) AppExchange directory.

Apatar's product lets salesforce.com customers simplify and accelerate their integration projects, allowing organizations to "aggregate and present information from disparate sources, without having to write a single line of code," company officials say.

Features of the Apatar Data Integration solution include a visual job designer and mapping, which enable non-developers to design and perform transformations. It also has connectivity to Oracle, MS SQL, CSV, flat files, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Sybase (News - Alert), FTP, HTTP, Compiere ERP, Goldmine CRM, XML (local and Web-based), Buzzsaw, LDAP, POP3, Amazon S3, and Flickr. The product also offers job scheduling.

"The ROI on small data integration projects is simply too low to justify buying and installing proprietary middleware software," said Renat Khasanshyn, CEO of Apatar.

With Extract, Transform, and Load capabilities, Apatar lets users link information between databases, such as MySQL, Microsoft (News - Alert) SQL, Oracle, and applications -- i.e. Salesforce.com, SugarCRM -- and such "Web 2.0 destinations as Flickr and Amazon S3." Headquartered in Western Massachusetts, Apatar operates a development center in Minsk, Belarus and is used by 250 organizations and individuals worldwide.

Earlier this week Salesforce.com was recognized as the "leading" CRM technology provider for capital markets by Securities Industry News and the research firm Financial Insights, an IDC (News - Alert) company.

The annual listing of the top technology providers within capital markets identifies those companies with dominant market presence in the North American securities industry as determined by the investment community.

Salesforce.com was selected based on a survey of 17,000 executives in the investment banking, investment management, wealth management, brokerage and banking industries. The ranking identifies those companies with the most actual usage and market presence in the industry, not simply brand awareness, and survey participants were to rate the solutions in use at their firm regarding ease of use, reliability, needs met, value, and whether they would recommend it, company officials say.

Last week Salesforce.com Foundation, the philanthropy outreach of Salesforce.com, announced the successes that educational institutions have achieved using donated licenses of Salesforce.com's on-demand CRM technology through the One Percent Product Donation Program.

Bronx Lab School, the Knowledge Is Power Program, Resources for Indispensable Schools and Educators, San Jose Education Foundation and USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences are among the more than 2,500 nonprofits and educational institutions around the world using Salesforce.com technology as a result of the program.

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David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.