Dell Boomi Upgrades Simplify Cloud Integration for SIs, SaaS Providers

By Khali Henderson

Dell Software announced Tuesday a new release of Dell Boomi AtomSphere, its cloud integration platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) solution, which now includes API management capabilities, and support for Integration Packs and process libraries.

Dell Boomi AtomSphere enables customer to connect any combination of cloud and on-remises applications without software, appliances or coding.

“We’ve inverted the classic integration approach,”  said Chris McNabb, general manager for  Dell Boomi, explaining that traditionally integration centralizes messaging in a data center by connecting all the enterprise assets via middleware on a hardware stack.  “We’ve done the exact opposite. What we have centralized is where configure and how you configure  your processes and build them out and define them,   and, how you managed and administer them. We put that in a central cloud location.”

The result, McNabb explains, is that the integrations can run wherever they need to, including behind a firewall.

In its summer release, Dell Boomi is adding API management, which  includes the ability to monitor, measure, secure, throttle and scale published APIs. This gives partners and their customers  visibility and control to manage and administer the suite of APIs and web services as they grow and scale.

These API management capabilities also help mitigate risk of system overload due to data volume and protection against denial-of-service attacks.

McNabb said, with new throttling capabilities, limits can be set on the amount of data that can be accepted, delivering DOS messages to all queries over the threshold. This helps control the rate and size of the data input, he added.

Further, McNabb said new IP address filtering enables creation of a list of acceptable devices to limit access to a given service, further ensuring QoS, for a defined user set.

Dell Boomi also announced the availability of Integration Packs for ISVs and SaaS providers.  Integration Packs provides a way for them to  embed integrations into software products as well as managed changes across customers from a central location.  That means they can leverage integrations that are used repeatedly, eliminating time-consuming individual client updates.

Similarly, process libraries make it possible for system integrators to capture business best practices and intellectual property in a process template that can be reused across multiple clients. Because of the sub-tenancy” structure of AtomSpheres environment, deployment of the processes in a library can be accomplished in minutes, allowing integrators to build custom services on top of Dell Boomi more quickly.

McNabb said that process libraries can automate the 70-80 percent of an integration job that is standardized, leaving only 20-30 percent requiring customization. Further, he said libraries could have multiple versions, such as a basic or master version. And, customers can belong to one or more libraries as needed.