Dell Boomi Upgrades Cloud Middleware
Boomi, the provider of cloud integration software acquired by Dell late last year, has upgraded its AtomSphere software with improved middleware connectivity, support for large datasets and extended monitoring capabilities.
AtomSphere is designed to connect Software as a Service cloud offerings from the likes of Salesforce.com, NetSuite and others to on-premises systems.
"Larger enterprises are continuing to adapt SaaS, and as a result the integration requirements are growing in scale and complexity," said Rick Nucci, Boomi's founder and now CTO of the Dell business unit. "We are seeing enterprises look at cloud and look at Boomi to help them integrate and then proceed to fit them into their environment as efficiently as possible and adhere to current investments that they've made."
AtomSphere Spring 11 includes a new middleware cloud gateway based on a Java message service connector that links to existing middleware offerings from IBM, Progress Software, Tibco and webMethods. The gateway connects to more than 70 SaaS applications, Nucci said.
Previously, AtomSphere connected directly to the apps but Nucci said customers wanted the ability to link to their existing middleware "because they've built intelligence or logic or validation routines into that middleware."
The new release also adds support for change data capture, or CDC, as well as large data processing in the form of hundreds of gigabytes per atom. For Salesforce.com shops, AtomSphere now offers optimized integration as a result of support for that company's Bulk API.
"It's a pretty complex API," Nucci said. "The approach we've taken abstracts a lot of those technical details and allows the user to give the data set to our connector and have our connector optimize and transmit the data up to Salesforce."
A new AtomSphere API allows customers to integrate its monitoring capabilities with their own systems management consoles.
The company also has launched a partner certification program. Dell Boomi has 70 partners now, many of which are SaaS providers and systems integration implementation providers. Nucci said the company is looking to bolster that number since partners are its primary route to market.
"As part of that scale and growth comes the need to ensure quality and make sure we have a very scalable and reliable and consistent means to acknowledge and accredit a partner who is investing in learning Boomi and really demonstrating that they get it," Nucci said.
To attain certification, partners will need to complete two implementations, pass an exam and commit to annual recertification.
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on April 27, 2011