With Dreamforce fast approaching, integration will be in the spotlight.
To gain the most from Salesforce’s revolutionary cloud platform, organizations need to quickly and easily connect to all kinds of applications and data sources. Nobody knows this better than Boomi.
As a leading Salesforce integration provider for the past decade, we have more Salesforce customers (1,500+ and counting) than any other integration vendor. For perspective, more companies are using Boomi to connect Salesforce than the total number of MuleSoft customers (just over 1,200).
In our experience, we’ve found that most Salesforce customers, as well as a lot of business units and other groups within larger companies, are most concerned with speed. They need to move just as fast as they possibly can.
For any company looking to quickly integrate any or all of their applications with Salesforce, Boomi provides the industry’s most comprehensive unified platform for addressing virtually any integration scenario. Critically, it offers a low-code development environment built on a centralized cloud-native architecture that brings unprecedented speed and agility to enterprise integration development.
But to make any of this possible, it needs to be open.
In our role as the pioneering leader of the integration cloud — what Gartner defines as the integration platform as a service (iPaaS) market — Boomi has learned that a true iPaaS integration cloud needs five capabilities to deliver the maximum benefits of the cloud — the same benefits that Salesforce brought to the market with its revolutionary cloud-based CRM almost 20 years ago.
The critical characteristics of an integration cloud include cloud-native, distributed, low-code, unified and open.
In this post we’ll look at the critical characteristic of openness: what it means, why it’s important and how Boomi delivers the best open integration platform for helping any Salesforce customer or other organization move faster with far greater efficiency and agility.
Hybrid Cloud Success Requires Open Integration Tools
The movement towards “best of breed” is dominating IT strategies. Gone are the days when companies purchased all their apps from one vendor.
To be truly agile, organizations need to be able to choose the best cloud application, platform or service for the job. And as a Salesforce customer, you need to be sure you can quickly and easily integrate any of your applications or data sources with Salesforce.
Openness is an integral part of moving to the cloud for supporting IT modernization and digital transformation initiatives. In this context, “open” means application and end-point agnostic.
Openness, by nature, is expansive. An open platform is vendor neutral, guarding against lock-in. It should be designed without bias towards any particular software or hardware.
Vendors who offer integration as part of a larger family of applications are naturally going to do a good job supporting their own software but probably not quite as good with applications and platforms from other vendors.
Also, acquisitions and business failures are a major factor in today’s marketplace. An integration vendor, in particular, needs to remain independent. If a vendor is purchased by another company, would it continue to provide its customers freedom of choice in selecting best-of-breed applications? You never know what tomorrow will bring, especially in today’s digital economy.
Flexibility is paramount for integration, as technologies evolve rapidly to force new business models and management strategies. Getting locked into a limited ecosystem of integration support (or risking that possibility because of an acquisition) is an important consideration.
IT modernization requires replacing legacy technology and architectures with new, cloud-ready applications and data sources. It also means adding the ability to connect to new devices at the network edge or embracing techniques like predictive analytics and AI.
To stay at the forefront of digital innovation, organizations must find ways to rapidly connect Salesforce and other core systems with an ever-expanding array of applications, data sources and devices.
Any integration tool that slows down that process is probably not the best choice for driving your organization’s digital efforts.
Want to learn more about the most important capabilities of an integration cloud? Please read the Boomi ebook, “The Critical Characteristics of an Integration Cloud.”
Integration Platforms are the Foundation for Digital Innovation
The Boomi integration platform as a service (iPaaS) provides market-leading connectivity and functionality while remaining vendor agnostic. Boomi is proving the importance of its open platform customer by customer, industry by industry. We’ve helped organizations like Easterseals Bay Area connect to Salesforce and a wide range of healthcare industry information systems, many requiring support for key industry protocols and standards.
We also help manufacturers and retailers like Kelly-Moore tie Salesforce into a wide-range of back-office applications, continually automating and streamlining their operations. Kelly-Moore now integrates more than 40 business process with Boomi, many related to Salesforce.
A Unified iPaaS: Foundation for a Connected Business
Unique to the industry, Boomi offers a comprehensive and unified platform, with a full set of tools for addressing most any enterprise integration scenario. Customers can opt to use the entire platform or pick and choose specific Boomi capabilities based on their integration requirements.
The Boomi integration platform is made up of five components, designed to meet dynamic business demands:
- Connect applications and data across IT environments with Boomi Integration
- Synchronize and enrich trusted data across the enterprise with our Master Data Hub
- Simplify trading partner network operations with B2B management
- Design, secure and scale APIs to connect across the enterprise
- Automate workflows and build customer journeys with low-code development
As an open platform, Boomi supports the full range of applications and technologies on the market, providing a comprehensive development environment that also gives customers the flexibility to use any cloud application, platform or service that suits their needs
In the maelstrom of the digital revolution, businesses are trying to transform and become more responsive. Salesforce is often at the center of these efforts to modernize IT, move to the cloud, and drive digital transformation.
But to achieve this, organizations will need an open integration platform to bring together all their applications, data, devices and people.
Businesses that fail to master integration will lag behind. The companies that succeed will become connected businesses and thrive in the digital era.
Learn more about the most important capabilities of an integration cloud in our eBook, “The Critical Characteristics of an Integration Cloud.”