Boomi rises to the challenge of providing more than integration and automation, introducing a unified platform with which customers can experiment, build, test, and run optimally.

Integration has come a long and it still has a long road ahead of it. The same holds true for integration and automation specialist, Boomi. As IT environments grow more complex, integration solutions become increasingly critical to unify data, automate processes, and enable agility. Expectations for IT to provide business capabilities and bring to life more business outcomes, have increased multi-fold.

Technologies like the cloud have spoiled us in that sense. And Generative AI offered a sneak peek of what’s possible and dangled the tantalising bait for us to run with it to discover what else is just around the corner.

Data, AI and integration: Whole platform projects

During Boomi World 2024, Larry Cone from Kitepipe, a long-time Boomi partner talked about how he witnessed first-hand Boomi’s evolution since its inception, and how projects with Boomi have evolved over the years, from mainly point-to-point integrations with Salesforce, master data management projects, and API management projects, to now ‘whole platform’ projects.

These ‘whole platform’ projects now leverage more component solutions like Master Data Hub that allow synchronization of master data across all clients’ platforms, API management, integration, and event streaming, for more powerful capability.

Larry Cone, Kitepipe

“So, why these changes recently? I think it’s a couple of things. First is the capability of the Boomi platform thanks to R&D; there is really a whole lot more capability and functionality on the platform,” said Larry who also added that as customers started thinking about data and its problems and opportunities, their view of Boomi as just an integration toolkit has also changed.

“So, Boomi as an integration tool? It’s really a data tool and AI has helped accelerate the light bulbs coming on for people as they start to understand that there is a lot of value to their data. And they are thinking about how they can use it more, and more effectively, and how it needs to be cleaned and transformed.”

“There’s optimization to be had”

Customers like HEB Construction were forthcoming about how Boomi enabled delivery of modernization projects that aligned it with its global parent company. Mircel Van Der Walt, Enterprise Architect, talked about a hybrid integration approach after being acquired by France-based Vinci Construction which helped the organization maintain existing expertise in local New Zealand systems like HR.

Mircel van der Walt, HEB

Mircel commented, before a master data management solution was implemented, “nothing existed in that space. It was only tables spread across multiple places, multiple sources, without a unified view of the object. So, it was essentially the first thing we implemented before we even started integration.”

“Boomi Master Data Management gives us an ecosystem (of capabilities) without us having to manually build tools and databases and forms. The solution already exists and we just have to configure it and then it becomes the core of our integration pathway with our parent organization.”

To align with Vinci’s ERP modernization project, Mircel talked about 2000 workshops that had been held to determine what was required, how the product would fit the gap analysis, design and scope, a minimum viable interface, as well as to ascertain future needs.

“So, we were having architectural meetings with France to find out what was our governed interface list, the interface being where our two respective systems meet.”

Mircel recounted that they were working through interfaces, building, testing, tracking, expanding, redoing them and then even completing a “minimum viable interface” a week before the deadline. “And one of the reasons we could do that was because we have the Boomi platform that allows us to build and test at speed,” he said.

“So, there’s optimization to be had, now that we understand the landscape a lot better.”

HEB has begun to add more complexity and advanced capacity to the system, with a firm gaze upon AI and potential benefits for HEB.

A composable architecture and playing nice

Chief product officer Ed Macosky had shared during Day 2’s technical keynote that, after having listened to customers’ feedback, the company intends to lead in three categories: integration and automation, data management, and API management, which are all encapsulated within the Boomi Enterprise Platform.

“Unless you can decompose your systems and break things down into smaller pieces, it’s very costly and time-consuming to try and run experiments.”

This platform was presented as a unified platform that builds interconnected processes across applications, databases, APIs, and more. Boomi’s chief product officer was also quick to point out that it does quarterly roadmaps, publicly for anyone to join, even competitors.

“We have an open ecosystem and we will continuously communicate publicly, where we are going with our roadmaps,” said Ed. ”We are and still will be committed to providing composability so that you can use different third-party services to come into the ecosystem, and not lock you into having to require one or the other.

Matt McLarty, Boomi CTO, had shared in a separate session that having a composable architecture is a best practice which actually aligns with a culture of experimentation. “Unless you can decompose your systems and break things down into smaller pieces, it’s very costly and time-consuming to try and run experiments.”

He described the Boomi Enterprise Platform as being a composable platform so that “we can plug in and ensure we have ability to add value in certain spots.

“We would love everyone to just use Boomi, but we also respect the fact that companies are at different stages and have different capabilities. Maybe, over time everything goes through Boomi. But we want to play nice with the technological landscape!”

Going beyond integration

Technology is catching up to the vision,Thomas Lai commented when asked about customer feedback to announcements. The VP and general manager in Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) noted a difference in customer attitudes now versus when he had visited them last year to talk about AI features and functions.

“Now, we have started to create that vision and roadmap product-wise, and they are starting to think that it is achievable,” Thomas said, confident that there would be demand for pilot projects as customers see a clearer picture of the steps to take to achieve better customer experience, for example.

He shared about a value engineering group that interviews key stakeholders to understand customers’ needs, develop recommendations, and then review them as well as provide data on projects, pre- and post-implementation.

“We want to grow our business to the next level. We want to leverage partners much more and as a result we have added more talent into our Southeast Asia business to support growing our partnerships and channels there,” Thomas said, indicating as well that Boomi is ready to support customers on projects that are beyond integration and the back office.