EventBridge:Build custom event buses for SaaS platforms

Background information

As an important part of cloud computing, SaaS platforms aim to provide information-based application software to enterprise users. To provide more diverse capabilities, SaaS vendors often build application marketplaces on which infrastructure is provided to allow ISVs to develop custom general-purpose applications. Enterprises can purchase and install enterprise-level applications provided by ISVs in the marketplaces to improve their IT efficiency. Some large enterprises with R&D capabilities may develop applications based on the capabilities provided by SaaS vendors. SaaS applications can be classified into the following types: SaaS official applications, ISV applications, and enterprise-developed applications.

As data exchanges and invocations are required among the preceding three types of SaaS applications, issues may occur due to different organizations and runtime environments. In this case, EventBridge is a suitable option. EventBridge can provide centralized, cross-product, cross-organization, and cross-cloud communication capabilities for the preceding types of SaaS applications. This way, you can efficiently build a SaaS ecosystem on Alibaba Cloud.

The preceding figure shows how a standard event bus is quickly built on a SaaS platform based on EventBridge and the CloudEvents specification to accelerate the setting up of a SaaS ecosystem and the R&D efficiency of ISVs. Based on EventBridge and Alibaba Cloud Function Compute, ISVs can efficiently develop event-driven serverless programs. For more information, see Best practices for building DingTalk connectors.

The following SaaS platforms are provided by Alibaba: DingTalk and Cloud Tmall. EventBridge supports the building of event buses on both DingTalk and Cloud Tmall.

DingTalk SaaS

In the preceding figure, a DingTalk connector is used to establish connections among DingTalk official applications, ISV applications, and enterprise-developed applications. EventBridge is used to forward data to help ISVs efficiently build event-driven applications. The following items describe data exchanges between different applications:

• Data exchanges between DingTalk official applications and DingTalk third-party applications. In this case, DingTalk third-party applications are ISV applications that are provided by DingTalk service providers.

  For example, when a new customer is added to Xbangbang, a customer relationship management (CRM) platform provided by a Chinese enterprise, a message is sent to the DingTalk group by the DingTalk chatbot.

• Data exchanges between DingTalk third-party applications.

  For example, if you purchase a CRM application and a financial application from an application marketplace, you can manage customers on the CRM application, and the income and expenses on the financial application. This way, you can solve problems such as disconnection between financial decision-making and business development.

• Data exchanges between DingTalk official applications and enterprise-developed applications.

  For example, when a new customer is added to jzsoft, a CRM platform provided by a Chinese enterprise, the client and order data is synchronized to the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.

Cloud Tmall SaaS

Cloud Tmall is an important part of the e-commerce system of Alibaba. Data on Cloud Tmall provides high business value to e-commerce merchants on Taobao and Tmall. To help Taobao and Tmall merchants efficiently utilize data on Cloud Tmall, the Cloud Tmall SaaS platform supports a large number of ISVs to develop applications for the merchants.

In the preceding figure, EventBridge is integrated into the system to accelerate the innovations of the ISVs. The ISVs can subscribe to e-commerce data in Alibaba by using standard methods provided by EventBridge to create business value for the merchants.