By Mark Emmons
Everyone has a story.
That’s why Boomi launched a new editorial series a year ago called “Five Minutes With.” Our idea was to sit down (OK, virtually) with customers, partners, analysts, and other thought leaders in the integration industry to get to know them a little better. We would produce snappy Q&A profiles where they share a mix of insights into their work, the business trends they see, and a little about their careers.
The goal was to produce something more personable and engaging than the usual content found in most corporate blogs.
And we also would quiz them on their hot pizza “integration” takes. We saw it as a nice icebreaker and envisioned that people would give straightforward responses. You know, something like, “I like extra mozzarella cheese and pepperoni.” Or maybe the occasional heathen, uh, business professional would say they ruin their pizza with anchovies.
Well, we greatly underestimated our profile subjects’ creativity.
It’s incredible how many people have found ways to take that silly question and tie it back to how they look at integration and automation. It’s even become the signature ingredient in our series. Now, people clearly come prepared for the question with imaginative and thoughtful answers.
So, on the first anniversary of our series, we’re debuting a dedicated webpage where you can browse all of the profiles in one place. Also, to mark National Pizza Day, here are some of the best slices (so to speak) from our question: What’s your favorite pizza integration?
Ethan Pack, President of The Pack Group, Inc.
“Sign me up for some quality cheese, marinara or tomato-based sauce, and pepperoni. I am a big fan of crust diversity – pretzel crusts and all that kind of stuff. But what I like about your question is the analogy to enterprise integration. We all know the architecture of a pizza. The interchangeability and innovation come with how you introduce the ingredients to customize it. Maybe it’s the Texan in me, but you can add BBQ sauce or BBQ beef or even switch up a bit with Philly steak or jalapeno peppers. The point is, you can build it any way you want.”
Alexander Wurm, Senior Analyst, Nucleus Research
“When you ask about pizza integrations, most people probably think about toppings like pepperoni or cheese. You’re usually not thinking about something more foundational, like the sauce or crust. With technology, you need to take the time to consider not only your integration tools but also reconsider your entire data infrastructure. You’ll likely have more success with your integrations as well as data management. So, whether that’s changing the sauce on your pizza to pesto or going thin crust, you shouldn’t be afraid to change up the entire pizza infrastructure instead of just the toppings.”
Robert Thomas, Senior Manager of Principal Enterprise Architecture
“I mostly grew up on Long Island, so I love New York-style pizza. But what I really love is how pizza can bring people together for great conversation. I mean, you can’t do pizza without beer, right? So, you can watch a Yankees game or a New York Giants game with pizza. You can also have a (Boomi) user group meeting with pizza. It’s just that universal kind of food that encourages people to connect and makes everyone happy.”
Ken Maglio, Solution Architect, World Wide Technology
“I’ll answer that by discussing a real integration problem we solved. We needed to take these large JSON files into a cloud database. But transferring that data took too long – something like 11 minutes to process 1,000 records. So, we created a way to chunk it apart and send it as a string. We can batch-process large data loads between our technologies and reconstruct that data in seconds. We went from 11 minutes to under 10 seconds for all the data export. It’s not a painful task because we put all this into an integration and don’t have to write our own code. The (Boomi) platform allows us to stitch everything together quickly, so now, any time we call APIs and get massive datasets, we use this same methodology. So, maybe it’s a new way to build the whole pizza shop to bake all the pizzas? You need something like this because the ‘ingredients’ are constantly changing.”
Waseem Samaan, Vice President and Global Head of Internal Audit and Risk, Boomi
“Everybody wants a little cheese, right? Well, Boomi integration is like the cheese on the pizza because it connects all the toppings. When you have all of these systems across the company, like toppings on a pizza, they’re independent and standalone. They don’t naturally connect. The connectivity of everything coming together as ingredients on pizza is the cheese. And that’s what Boomi integration and automation is for digital systems.”
Of course, not everyone is a fan of pizza. Several people have tweaked the question so that it’s about integrating different foods. Their responses have been just as great.
Vinit Verma, Vice President/Head of Intelligent Data Solutions, Jade Global
“I definitely like Indian food. But what makes that more interesting is integrating it with Chinese cuisine. Indo-Chinese is my favorite. It’s like integrating Indian spices with Chinese cooking techniques. That creates a unique, flavorful experience. I would say it’s a bit like data integration. You’re blending the best of different worlds to create something innovative and delightful. It’s like what Jade Global does with Boomi. We’re blending the different application systems to create something innovative and delightful for our customers.”
Abhinav Gaur, Middleware Specialist, Tony’s Chocolonely
“I love butter chicken. It’s an Indian delicacy and more of a guilty pleasure for me with a little curry and chicken. It has a lot of ingredients, so it’s kind of an integration process because of the spices. You have to get the chicken marinated and add all those ingredients. I try to make it healthy, but I don’t want to lose the taste. So, to make it balance, it’s a struggle. You can have five to six different kinds of spices, and you can’t say that the taste is because of one spice. That mixture gives you the richness of taste, and it has to be in the right amount. That is where the artistry lies.”
Prexa Dave, Senior Manager, Integrations, Nutanix
“I feel that I’m a good cook. At least the food I make is healthier than at restaurants. In the kitchen, I like to integrate Thai and Indian food. I just try mixing some of the different ingredients. Mostly, it’s Thai curry paste mixed with Indian spices to make some fusion. Sometimes, I also use Mexican food. It’s a nice combination.”
Finally, the answers we get sometimes are just humorous.
Tom Davenport, Author and Consultant
“It’s not terribly exotic, but I love Italian sausage. I like it with onions and mushrooms. My wife likes to sneak in some olives, even though I don’t really like them. But I guess that makes it healthier.”
See our full “Five Minutes With” profile series here to learn more about what your peers are thinking about and achieving.