With iPaaS market on growth tear, Dell Boomi ups game with new release
Tom Paine
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The iPaaS market is booming (no pun), with growth rates probably accelerating in recent years, as the Cloud is driving digital transformation on a large scale. Most of the big players are doing quite well. At least one independently owned competitor, perhaps two, appear IPO-bound.
Cloud integration, which originally tended to revolve around a few key SaaS applications, has mushroomed geometrically in the number of applications and services being connected. And cloud-to-premise and premise-to-premise integration remains important.
Berwyn (PA)-based Dell Boomi (Boomi), perhaps the leading pioneer in cloud-based integration, today announced the Fall 2016 release of its integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) "to help organizations rapidly and cost-effectively integrate data across applications in hybrid IT environments of cloud-based and legacy on-premises systems" [emphasis noted.]
"The latest release enables Boomi customers to more efficiently build a connected business at scale, with new features to increase user productivity, accelerate implementation and provide unparalleled control of integrations."
This release seems more far reaching and substantive than Boomi's usual annual releases. Dell has deepened its marketing and product management functions over the past year, as well as increasing development staff, and a recent product briefing I received displayed that depth, although in some ways they are still playing catch-up in terms of understanding the total scope of the market. As with any high-growth market, things change quickly.
Boomi now supplies more than 5,000 customers with enterprise-grade capabilities for any-to-any data and application integration, master data management (MDM) and API management within its platform, the company says.
The emphasis of this release appears to be on ease of use, broader functionality, and providing more "building blocks" ( such as what Boomi calls accelerators, and APIs), to allow users to link components together more quickly. APIs have become keys in the changing competitive iPaaS landscape.
Speed of deployment is a major product feature. Perhaps responding to competitor MuleSoft's strengths, particularly among larger enterprises, was another priority.
“Cloud adoption is driving a dramatic surge in integration requirements across business applications, as well as creating new opportunities for enterprises to connect with customers and partners,” said Chris McNabb, CEO of Boomi. “This means integration teams are under ever increasing pressure to demonstrate agility and deliver more, at an accelerated pace. With this release, our platform provides organizations with the speed and confidence to better engage their customers and leapfrog the competition.”
Boomi has been one of Michael Dell's favorite businesses since the then-public Dell acquired it in 2010 from founding architect Rick Nuuci, then-CEO Bob Moul, and principal outside investor FirstMark Capital. And Boomi has continued to evolve and perform well under current CEO McNabb's leadership. Headcount is approaching 300, about half in Berwyn with a development emphasis, the other half in San Francisco focused more on sales and marketing.
The iPaaS market has mushroomed quickly; When Dell acquired Boomi, for example, it was still quite small in revenue terms.
Financial insights into the market have been scarce, but Dell sources indicate that Boomi has been growing 50 to 60% plus per annum over the past two or three years. Although that maybe less than a couple of other competitors. If MuleSoft files for an IPO, its S-1 will be an interesting barometer for the industry's economics. MuleSoft, valued at $1.5 billion in its most recent round last year, said it grew revenue by 92% in 2015, exceeding $100 million. SnapLogic just today announced a new $40 million raise.
With Dell's merger with EMC completed, it may open up more intra-Dell opportunities for Boomi, since EMC includes more advanced cloud management tools than the old Dell itself. Whether those opportunities materialize remains to be seen. Sometimes working to achieve synergies within a large corporate structure can be more of a hindrance than an aid.
R "Ray" Wang, Principal Analyst, Founder, and Chairman of Constellation Research, sees a hot market. "We see MuleSoft for complex clouds. We see SnapLogic making gains and Jitterbit on play with SFDC customers." Boomi, he told me by email, may have been distracted somewhat by Dell issues.
Boomi has expanded its list of pre-built connectors for popular applications and cloud services. With this release, Boomi has added or updated connectors for Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS), DoubleClick by Google, Hobsons, Intuit QuickBooks 2016, Magento, Marketo, Microsoft Azure Blob Storage, Microsoft Azure SQL Database and SQL Data Warehouse, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, MQTT, NetSuite, Oracle Taleo Cloud Service, Salesforce, SAP, Slack, SugarCRM, and UltiPro.
Boomi has also added significant enhancements to its Master Data Management (MDM) and Electronic Data interchange (EDI) capabilities. EDI, on which Boomi was founded, is still a significant contributor for it.
The release also delivers an enhanced UI to offer improved guidance and assistance for users throughout the platform, including more robust search functions and embedded help.
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