Boomi upgrades its integration platform as a service with new AI agents, acquisitions – Business

Boomi LP has acquired software assets from two companies, APIIDA GmbH and Cloud Software Group Inc., to enhance its flagship integration-platform-as-a-service product.

The iPaaS provider announced the deals today at its Boomi World 2024 conference in Denver. Alongside the features gained through the two acquisitions, Boomi detailed several new platform capabilities that it developed in-house. The latter enhancements are headlined by a set of artificial intelligence agents designed to ease customers’ day-to-day work.

Boomi launched at the turn of the millennium and became part of Dell Technologies Inc. through a 2010 acquisition. About a decade later, Dell sold the software maker for $4 billion to Francisco Partners and TPG Capital. Boomi’s iPaaS platform helps companies develop integrations that allow data to move between cloud applications, databases and other workloads.

Programs typically exchange data using application programming interfaces. The first acquisition that Boomi disclosed today saw it purchase API Control, an API management platform developed by German software maker APIIDA. The platform allows administrators to monitor all their company’s APIs through a centralized interface that displays usage metrics, cybersecurity information and related data.

API Control doubles as a productivity tool. According to APIIDA, developers can use its centralized interface to quickly find the APIs needed for their work.

As part of the second acquisition that Boomi announced today, it purchased certain “API management assets” from Cloud Software Group. The latter company was formed through the merger of Tibco Software Inc. and Citrix Systems Inc. in 2022. 

The assets bought by Boomi relate to a product called Mashery that Tibco acquired in 2015 from Intel Corp. The chipmaker, in turn, obtained the offering through a $200 million startup acquisition two years earlier. Mashery was an API gateway designed to help companies filter unauthorized requests to their APIs, monitor traffic levels and perform related maintenance tasks.

“With these acquisitions, we’re putting an end to operational overhead and API sprawl by offering a robust, enterprise-grade and federated API management solution, giving customers the ability to quickly provision, discover, secure, and infinitely scale in one end-to-end enterprise platform,” said Boomi Chief Executive Officer Steve Lucas (pictured). 

Alongside the two acquisitions, Boomi today debuted several internally-developed enhancements to its iPaaS platform. One of the main highlights is a framework that allows customers to automate repetitive application integration tasks with the help of AI agents.

On launch, the framework will include four agents. The first can surface technical information about application integration topics using natural language prompts. A second agent, Boomi Scribe, is capable of automatically generating documentation for newly created integrations.

The two other agents in the lineup are designed for more advanced tasks. The first, DesignGen, can automatically build application integrations to save time for developers. It’s joined by Boomi DataDetective, which promises to help software teams ensure that data moves between workloads in a secure manner.

Customers with more advanced requirements can integrate third-party agents into Boomi’s platform using APIs. At Boomi World 2024 today, the company introduced a prepackaged third-party agent powered by technology from startup Vianai Systems Inc. It allows workers to interact with financial information stored in databases and other applications using natural language prompts.

Rounding out the list of product updates is a new tool called Boomi DataHub. According to the company, it’s designed to help companies more efficiently manage the information they use in AI and analytics projects.

Organizations often have multiple copies of important data that are stored in different applications. Over time, changes made by workers can lead to inconsistencies between those copies. DataHub includes MDM, or master data management, features that can avoid such inconsistencies.

Boomi plans to expand the platform with additional features over time. In particular, the company will add capabilities to ease the task of moving information between workloads. It also envisions using DataHub to standardize the format of records from different systems and thereby ease analysis.

Photo: Boomi