By John Bennett
Boomi World 2019 opened with a full day of informative keynotes, deep-dive breakout sessions, exhibits and demos.
In front of a packed hall of thousands at the Washington Hilton, Boomi CEO Chris McNabb expressed thanks for Boomi’s growing family of partners and customers along with genuine excitement for how we are delivering on bold promises for digital transformation.
Boomi by the Numbers
McNabb began by charting Boomi’s impressive velocity in the software market, tying to the launch of the company’s new brand identity, unlimited possibilities and space exploration.
Since introducing the first integration platform as a service (iPaaS) in 2007, Boomi has grown dramatically. Today, the company has more than 9,000 customers, 580 partners and a presence in 80 countries. And the Boomi Platform has been used for 103 million data mappings and has connected to over 1,500 types of endpoints.
Talk to the Brand: Conversational AI
Laetitia Cailleteau, Accenture’s global lead for Conversational AI, took the stage to share how Accenture and Boomi are making AI-powered, multi-lingual voice interfaces a reality.
Accenture is at the forefront of designing advanced artificial intelligence (AI) solutions that focus on front-end capabilities. Boomi leads the way in integration of enterprise systems. Together, the partner companies will deliver new, personalized, effective ways to communicate with customers.
This is just one of the many ways Boomi is working with AI. From bits and bytes to bots, the intelligence of the Boomi Platform will only continue to grow in scope and depth as more customers use Boomi to solve more problems.
Boomi Gives Back
Kenny Oxler, CIO for the American Cancer Society (ACS) and J. Michael Haynie, Ph.D., the Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University (IVMF)’s vice chancellor for strategic initiatives and innovation, gave examples of how Boomi touches people’s daily lives.
For ACS, Boomi has had a direct effect on the quality of patient care. Boomi helped ACS complete nine critical transformations, including launching a ride-sharing service that provides patients with transportation to treatment. And IVMF uses Boomi to help prepare veterans for returning to the workforce.
Boomi and Dell Technologies are committed to raising $20,000 for ACS through a baton-passing activity at Boomi World, inspired by the Relay for Life fund-raising events. And McNabb pledged that Boomi will hire 1,000 veterans in the coming years.
Boomi Customers Transforming Business
Throughout the day, customers were front and center. In a panel session facilitated by Boomi’s vice president of global sales and business development, Will Corkery, four customers shared how Boomi has helped them transform their businesses and accelerate results.
- Gilead Sciences‘ director of IT, Murali Anakavur, talked about how Boomi’s low-code development environment filled the prescription for the biopharmaceutical company’s modernizing applications and consolidating integrations in a common platform.
- Vineet Bansal, SVP, CTO and CISO at iptiQ, explained how the tech-savvy startup disrupted the insurance market with Boomi, bringing new, affordable products to the mid-market that help companies launch products 6 to 10 times faster than before.
- The Leading Hotels of the World got an upgrade with Boomi. VP of information technology Michael Leaderman explained that its modernized infrastructure helps it keep better track of customers and their preferences, allowing this nimble 300-person company to deliver great experiences at boutique hotels and resorts around the world.
- Sky‘s Olive Perrins, head of in-home experience, described how the British media company continues to blaze trails and win awards with self-service automation that keeps millions of subscribers happy.
McNabb urged customers to submit their Boomi success stories to the 2019 Boomi Blue Challenge, honoring innovation and achievement in digital transformation and accelerating business. Four of this year’s winners will have the opportunity to attend Boomi World Tour London 2020.
Welcome to the Boomiverse
The Boomiverse is Boomi’s new online community for learning. Introduced today by Boomi COO Chris Port (and B, the space-suit clad Boomiverse ambassador), this interactive, gamified environment will provide new ways of interacting with Boomi experts along with even more resources and training material.
Port talked about the importance of ongoing education for all workers, encouraging Boomi partners and customers to think of Boomi as their Mission Control: “We’re here for you,” he said.
More than 2,000 articles are now available in Boomi’s Training and Support Knowledge Base. In the past week, the company has certified an average of 50 Boomers per day. And over 20,000 users have been certified as Boomi developers or administrators.
An Emmy-Award Winning Emcee and “The Mayor of the Internet”
Throughout the day, emcee Katie Linendoll guided the audience through everything from down-to-earth matters of conference logistics to the space-age advances of AI and the Boomiverse. The Emmy Award-winning TV personality and technology expert will continue to interview Boomi executives and guest speakers throughout the event.
And in a motivational keynote presentation, best-selling author Alexis Ohanian shared his personal journey as well as lessons that tech professionals can learn from professional athletes (he advocates coaches for all), and a call for paid paternity leave. Known as “The Mayor of the Internet,” Ohanian is the investor and founder of Initialized Capital and co-founder of Reddit.
Women in Technology Breakfast
The earliest activity on the day’s agenda was the Women in Technology breakfast, hosted by Boomi and Slalom Consulting. Introduced by Boomi chief marketing officer Mandy Dhaliwal and Christina Hutto, director, global partner marketing at Slalom and moderated by Linendoll, a panel of distinguished women shared their thoughts on the rewards and challenges of working in technology.
Dhaliwal reminded the audience that Boomi is committed to hiring a diverse workforce and supporting women in the workplace. She sees this session as the first of many.
Much more is happening at Boomi World than we have space or time to share in a single blog post. We have a number of news releases and announcement blogs planned for Day Two — stay tuned!