Integration via the Cloud

There’s a lot of discussion of late about the right way to integrate disparate cloud computing services. Some of the approaches rely on an appliance located within the customer’s site, while others rely on middleware service running in the cloud.

But Boomi today put forward one of the strongest arguments yet for not only doing the integration in the cloud, but why that service needs to have a multi-tenant architecture.

The latest version of the Boomi Atomsphere service adds Boomi Suggests, a data mapping tool that makes it easier to update and add new integration services by keeping an index of all data a customer has stored in Boomi. Customers can opt out of the service if they choose, but given the number of times applications tend to get updated in a year, this service that automatically generates data maps has the potential to save a lot of manual labor.

As noted by Boomi CTO Rick Nucci, mapping data is one of the most time-consuming tasks associated with any integration. Because Boomi customers all share the same underlying database, Boomi can index all the custom connections and then make suggestions to the customer on how best to integrate them based on the information in the Boomi database.

In contrast, Nucci says other services just shift the same on-premise integration headaches that IT organizations have on premise to the cloud, which in some respects can make things more difficult to manage.

The battle of integration in the cloud is just getting started. But if history is any guide, the path of least IT resistance usually winds up winning the day.