Dell Boomi Aims To Simplify Cloud App Integration

Dell Boomi on Tuesday released an upgrade to its AtomSphere cloud integration service, adding the ability to use the collective intelligence of its customer base to map applications and data.

It's been nearly one year since Dell said it agreed to acquire Boomi, whose AtomSphere service is designed to simplify integration between cloud and premises-based applications. The new release, dubbed AtomSphere Fall 11, is aimed at addressing more complex integration requirements.

"The interesting trend here is that the integrations that we're seeing that our customers are using Boomi for are increasing in complexity," said Rick Nucci, founder and CTO of Dell Boomi, during a briefing with press and analysts. "The average number of applications connected today across Boomi's customer base is 11, which is a nice indicator of increasing complexity in integration that Boomi is helping to simplify."

Boomi Suggest, launched last year, allows customers to share an anonymous index of every data map built by Boomi users. Nucci said while customers have the option of opting out, so far no one has done so. The index suggests how developers should be mapping their data fields. When Boomi Suggest was launched, there were 5,000 maps in the index; now there are 50,000. And within those 50,000 maps, over 1.5 million individual data mappings are in that index, Nucci said.

With AtomSphere Fall 11, Dell Boomi is adding a mapping function, where customers can build filed level transformations on data.

Dell Boomi has also added the following new features in the release:

• Business Rules: Users can now build multi-step conditional business rule logic into their integration workflows.
  
  
• Partner Dashboards: These provide the ability for Boomi partners to create centralized dashboards. Currently, Dell Boomi has 70 ISV and systems integration partners, and the Partner Dashboards let them have centralized control of data and application integrations, while enabling them to monitor usage detail.
  
  
• Expanded trust.boomi.com: Launched last year, this feature is designed to provide transparency of Dell Boomi's operational performance. Now the company is extending that capability by providing "improved transparency," where metrics will be published.
  
  
• Predictive Assistance: Customers can gather return-on-investment metrics using analytics that measure usage characteristics.

The new features in Dell Boomi AtomSphere are available now, though Business Rules is only offered with Dell Boomi AtomSphere Professional or higher. Pricing starts at $550 per month.

Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on October 25, 2011