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For every company that signs up with one of those fast-growing SaaS vendors like Salesforce.com, there's usually a need to move data from pre-existing, on-premise systems into the cloud.

To meet that need, open-source data integration software provider Jitterbit Thursday introduced a software and service combination aimed at data migration as well as ongoing synchronization needs.

Jitterbit Data Migration for Salesforce is said to speed and simplify a task that often turns out to be more complex than expected. Companies often discover incomplete data and data validation and formatting problems during migrations, according to Jitterbit. And fixes typically involve rework and iterative data-extract and transformation steps.

"More often than not, companies try to do this on their own using Salesforce.com's Data Loader, but there are many steps along the way that can go wrong," said Ilan Sahayek, Jitterbit's chief technology officer.

Data Migration for Salesforce provides support services as well as use of the company's open-source software. The Basic Data Migration for Salesforce offering includes nine days of services, a 45-day software license and support for moving up to 500,000 records for $9,850.

The Standard offering includes 15 days of support, a 60-day software license and movement of up to 1 million records for $16,000. The Enterprise package includes 25 days of services, a 90-day license and movement of up to 1.5 million records for $29,000.

Of course, Jitterbit hopes customers will get comfortable with the software and license it for ongoing data synchronization needs. As a benefit, that work can be handled without additional setup effort, Sahayek said.

"Once you've used our product to handle migration, all the transformation rules and mechanisms required for synchronization are already in place," he said. "All you have to do is apply an appropriate filter, and the setup will handle incremental changes."

Salesforce has data integration partners, including Informatica and Cast Iron, that address ongoing data synchronization, but that's not the same as the initial, large-scale data migration challenge.

Sahayek claims Cast Iron is focused on integration rather than migration, but a review of Cast Iron documentation lists migration capabilities including data profiling, data cleansing, and data enrichment.

As for Informatica, Sahayek acknowledges the company has an attractively priced "low-end" [Cloud Data Integration] offering, but he said it doesn't support parallel processing, so enterprise-scale migrations are likely to require the vendor's more powerful and expensive Informatica 9 software.

Informatica contests Jitterbit's claim, saying Informatica Cloud Services does support parallel processing, with customers processing up to millions of rows per day. Further, it adds that the offering has been the number-one Salesforce.com integration choice for the last two years, supporting more than 500 customers and 20,000 integration jobs per day.

Another competitive option is Talend, which, like Jitterbit, offers open-source data integration and migration software and support services.

Jitterbit says the Data Migration for Salesforce packages also can be used with Oracle CRM, NetSuite and other SaaS applications. For those requiring ongoing data synchronization, a standard, annual subscription to Jitterbit software starts at just under $10,000, including maintenance and support.