Top 5 Highlights from the July 2020 Boomi Roadmap Webinar
Continuing Dell Boomi's tradition of quarterly roadmap reviews, Boomi unveiled some exciting new features and roadmap items across their entire platform during the Q3 review held on July 9, 2020. As a Dell Boomi partner, Big Compass continues to monitor Boomi's Roadmap closely so we can share with you some of the highlights we feel are most impactful.
First, let's sing a little praise for the platform that is Boomi! One of the great conveniences of subscribing to a cloud integration platform (aka iPaaS) is the ability to take advantage of new features, patches, bug fixes, and just general improvements in a near-seamless fashion. That's why we love Boomi – it's easy.
Contrast this with typical the on-premise iPaaS upgrade: patching your servers, operating systems, worrying about backward compatibility and regression testing, running the confusing install and migration scripts, having them fail and leaving you stuck choosing between two bad options: backing the upgrade out or pushing through bugs to get on the latest version, or generally just falling out-of-step or out-of-support with your software vendor. Integration is already a tough business without the added hassle of on-prem version control.
General Information
As is the norm, the Roadmap event was facilitated by Ed Macosky, Head of Product at Boomi. He introduced a new roadmap theme, "The Flywheel Model", which represents the speed at which customers can onboard and offboard features of the platform, tailoring to their needs.
The Roadmap event covered every product in their suite (seemingly in order of importance): Platform, Integration, API Management, Atom Runtimes, B2B/EDI, Connectivity and Connectors, Master Data Hub, Flow, Data Catalog and Prep (formerly Unifi). I've selected five of the most significant points from the review to discuss here.
Platform
The Boomi platform has several significant enhancements. First, to get Boomi in the hands of more developers, the platform will have expanded trial features. This is a simple way to grow the number of developers familiar with the platform.
Another enhancement that expands the platform is a bundling framework that allows solutions to combine multiple product sets. An example could be a solution of Integration + Flow + MDM. This simplifies the implementation of Boomi solutions.
Yet another Platform enhancement is the addition of custom branding. This allows OEM clients to present a client-branded solution versus Boomi branding.
Integration
There are several noteworthy enhancements in the Integration area. An example is a new CI/CD reference implementation that helps automate testing deployments by storing code elements in a repository. Along those same lines is an enhancement of component metadata that will provide ease for building services catalogs, automated testing, or scripting installs.
Atom Runtime
The emphasis in Atom Runtime appears to be adding features to support auto-scaling. One of the coolest items revealed during the Roadmap was an item called "Smart Scheduling." This feature will examine your load history and determine the best time to execute a scheduled task to more evenly distribute workloads.
In addition to Smart Scheduling, there is now also more elegant onboarding and offboarding, improved logging, and reference architecture for HA/DR.
Connectivity
A much-anticipated update in Connectivity has arrived: Fixing the Salesforce Platform Events connector to work with atom clouds or molecules. This is enabled within the platform now with a new feature that allows connectors to run on a single node of a cluster (molecule).
There is also a new SDK for custom connectors with the ability to create a connector and then use it outside of the Boomi platform and a new Open API connector. This is particularly intriguing and could have some interesting implications for those who want to leverage Boomi’s “Connect to Anything” capability without using the entire platform.
Master Data Hub
The most interesting areas for MDH centered on training, with a new MDH certification now available.
Outside of the training area, MDH has a significant feature added: the ability to link a golden record to more than one source record. This opens many possibilities that weren't previously possible in MDH. Also, Sources and Models are now combined into a single package for easier code management and deployment. Prior to this you would have to manage each aspect of an MDM solution separately.
Roadmap Summary
I'm continually impressed with Dell’s investments in the Boomi platform. They continue to push the envelope of what is possible by combining ease of use with enterprise-grade robustness. Some of these new features will benefit existing Boomi installations as well as entice new customers.
I'd love to know the areas of the Roadmap event you believe have the most significant impact on your business and integration plans. Let's schedule a time to review what's relevant to you and how these roadmap updates can be harnessed to improve your integration and competitive advantage.