Boomi Unveils Vision for Intelligent Integration and Automation at Boomi World 2024

Integration platform provider Boomi kicked off its Boomi World 2024 conference with a bang, announcing major updates to its platform vision, new capabilities powered by AI, and two key acquisitions to expand its portfolio. The event, held in Denver and virtually, brought together over 20,000 customers, partners, and community members to explore the future of integration and automation in the enterprise.

In his opening keynote, Boomi CEO Steve Lucas outlined the company's strategy to help organizations overcome the challenges of digital fragmentation and complexity through an intelligent, unified platform. He emphasized the power of connection as a fundamental human need, highlighting Boomi's mission to connect everyone to everything, anywhere.

"Connectivity remains a critical challenge for almost every organization," said Lucas. "The chief culprit is digital fragmentation, a byproduct of digital shifts that, paradoxically, lead to digital silos and disjointed technical architectures that leave the average enterprise now juggling over 364 applications and numerous API gateways."

To tackle this complexity, Boomi unveiled its expanded Boomi Enterprise Platform. The platform combines API management, integration and automation, and data management into a unified foundation to accelerate development and drive business outcomes. 

"Boomi is an integration and automation solution on a single platform that builds interconnected processes in your organization," explained Lucas. "But one thing that we will also do is throughout this year and next year introduce capability that enables you to move data seamlessly at high scale, at high volume in and out of your lakes and warehouses."

API Management for the AI Economy

A key pillar of Boomi's platform vision is next-generation API management designed for the era of AI. With the explosive growth of APIs across enterprises, effective management, and governance have become paramount. To address this need, Boomi announced the acquisitions of APIIDA's federated API management business and the Mashery API management assets from Cloud Software Group.

Matt McLarty, CTO at Boomi, explained the significance: "Companies today suffer from API sprawl: API gateways are everywhere, and there's no effective global view or management dashboard for discovering, governing, and securing them, let alone rationalizing API investments and promoting best-in-class APIs for adoption."

The acquired technologies will allow Boomi to provide a single control plane for API management across diverse vendors and gateways. This federated approach gives enterprises total visibility and control while facilitating API discovery, reuse, and consumption.

"By bringing together APIIDA and Mashery with Boomi, we're bringing all the resources and the great minds and engineers together to kind of take on that whole world as a future of API management," said McLarty.

Accelerating Innovation With AI Agents

Perhaps the most exciting announcement was the introduction of Boomi's AI agent framework. This set of capabilities allows developers to create, deploy, and manage AI-powered agents that automate complex processes and decisions.

The framework includes out-of-the-box agents built by Boomi, such as the Boomi Answers agent for providing contextual help and the Boomi DataDetective agent for classifying sensitive data and tracking lineage. Additionally, it supports pluggable third-party agents and enables customers to build their own using Boomi's integration and automation tools.

Lucas emphasized the transformative potential of AI, predicting that within two years, thousands of semi-autonomous agents will be making decisions across organizations. He used the example of expense report approvals, manual processes ripe for disruption.

"Who gets up on a Monday morning and goes, "I am excited to see 20 expense reports in my inbox that I need to review and approve?" quipped Lucas. "Two years from now, no human will approve an expense report. Why? Because large language models will perfectly learn how human judgment has been applied."

To showcase the power of pluggable AI, Boomi demoed an integration with Vianai Systems' conversational AI for finance. Using natural language queries, users can directly ask questions about their financial systems and receive real-time answers.

"Technology and business leaders have struggled to leverage the power of generative AI in their enterprises due to the very real issues of accuracy and security, relevance to business users with domain-specific requirements, and the inability to query both structured and unstructured data and systems in natural language," said Dr. Vishal Sikka, CEO of Vianai Systems. "With Boomi FinTalk powered by Vianai, we are solving these issues."

While the potential of AI is immense, Lucas acknowledged the need for strong governance and control. He envisioned a future corporate registry for AI agents, similar to HR systems that manage human workers.

"People are saying, 'There is no chance. There is no self-respecting CIO that will allow dozens, hundreds, or thousands of these semi-autonomous or autonomous agents to work inside of her business or company and just make decisions willy-nilly'," said Lucas. "A corporate registry for these agents must exist. We're going to offer this agent registry capability now. That's the key – this year and next year."

Trusted Data for Analytics and AI

Recognizing data as the lifeblood of AI and analytics, Boomi also unveiled enhanced data management capabilities. The new Boomi DataHub acts as a trusted data foundation, providing a high-velocity, high-quality data access layer for diverse workloads.

DataHub incorporates master data management, integration pipelines, and a framework for expanding data governance functionality. By offering a unified view across distributed data landscapes, it enables organizations to make confident decisions based on reliable, consistent information.

"Centralizing data has proved to be a dead end for companies," argued Lucas. "A better approach is to build connectivity, governance, and automation into the IT resources companies already have, taking advantage of AI to make this work faster and easier than ever before."

Empowering Citizen Integrators

Throughout the keynote, Boomi's leaders emphasized the goal of empowering more users to leverage integration and automation capabilities. By combining no-code/low-code tools with AI-assisted development, the company aims to enable citizen integrators and relieve the burden on IT teams.

However, this democratization doesn't mean sacrificing control. Boomi provides guardrails and governance features to ensure users operate within predefined boundaries and adhere to corporate policies.

"You don't want to just throw tools at non-technical people and let them run away," explained McLarty. "We have a whole model with the right guardrails in place to ensure what's built will be well-integrated and not disruptive."

Partnering for Success

Boomi's extensive partner ecosystem plays a vital role in delivering integration solutions to customers worldwide. The event featured a panel discussion with executives from global systems integrators and consulting firms, who shared insights on market trends, customer challenges, and the value of partnering with Boomi.

Rob Vatter, EVP at Cognizant, stressed the importance of business alignment and effective change management. "These table stakes – tried and true, any consultant will tell you. But beyond that, there's something that I think is probably the most important thing that we have to set up with our clients. And it's really the upper left-hand box, business alignment."

Other panelists highlighted opportunities around data engineering, API management, and industry-specific solutions. They emphasized the need for a holistic approach that combines technology and domain expertise to drive meaningful outcomes.

Continued Innovation

Boomi World 2024 showcased the company's commitment to continuous innovation and customer success. With its expanded platform capabilities, AI-powered development framework, and strong partner ecosystem, Boomi is well-positioned to help organizations tame complexity and thrive in the era of AI.

As developers, engineers, and architects navigate the evolving landscape of integration and automation, Boomi aims to be a trusted guide and enabler. By abstracting away complexity and providing intuitive tools, the company empowers technical professionals to focus on high-value problems and accelerate digital transformation.

Looking ahead, Boomi's roadmap is shaped by close collaboration with customers, partners, and the broader community. As Lucas noted, "Our platform and partner ecosystem must grow to match the expanding scope of integration."

With its vision for an intelligent, unified platform, Boomi is not just connecting systems and data – it's connecting people and ideas to drive innovation forward. As enterprises seek to harness the power of AI and conquer digital fragmentation, Boomi stands ready to help them achieve those goals with speed, agility, efficiency, and trust.