Recently PivotLink partnered with Boomi to give our customers and partners automated access to over 70 different applications and other sources like Databases and XML. As an On-Demand Business Analytics company this was a great milestone for us in bringing simplicity to the customer experience and unburdening IT.
Boomi’s success reminds of last-gen efforts at data integration and how one “small” company reacted to it 
Over the years, I have learned the following about connecting to applications to get data out:
- Getting data out of applications is a very cumbersome and unavoidable part of Business Analytics. It poses a serious friction point for a SaaS sales cycle and it has to be addressed. It also leaves doubts in the minds of decision makers about the cost and success of the project.
- Important data is no longer just behind the firewall – it is inside and outside, in applications like Salesforce.com, Netsuite etc. Customers who just want to connect to cloud sources should not have to pay the price of deploying something behind their firewall.
- New age applications like Salesforce.com and Netsuite are significantly easier to deal with as compared to Siebel, Peoplesoft, SAP, Oracle. Documented, open web services interfaces is the way to go.
- Developing and maintaining connectors is defocusing for a business analytics company. We want to focus on what to do with the data and metadata and not lock up valuable developer resources to learn the interfaces to 100s of application sources, develop connectors and maintain them.
Here’s why we partnered with Boomi:
- The SaaS architecture unburdens our customer’s IT and unburdens our operations as well. Boomi takes care of keeping the connectors and the platform up and running and adding new connectors and features. What a relief!
- Boomi exposes the connectors via two technologies called Gateway and Widget that allow us to package a Boomi developed Salesforce.com or Oracle connector with our UI and deliver a packaged experience for the customer
- Subscription pricing model that removes the need for huge upfront investments in building connectors
- Abstraction of complex schema whenever possible – For example, Boomi’s connectors expose Netsuite objects and not the underlying relational tables. This make is easy for our services and our customers to get up and running quickly
- Vast library of connectors made available in a simple Workflow – all delivered as SaaS
- For a full list of connectors, please see this page
Tell us about your integration experience and what role did extracting data play in your BI implementations.
Ajay,
Very good commentary around why PivotLink chose Boomi as a data connector vendor. I agree with your reasoning and approach. In this day and age, organizations must focus on their core competency and try to leverage partner network where ever possible to maximize organizational, customer and partner value.
There are so many examples in other areas of industries where industries/businesses know where to draw a line and where to engage partners. For example, take airline industry…. most of the major airline carriers are in transportation business. But Airline industry does not provide transportation services from door to door to its passengers. They rely on local mode of transportation (Taxis, Limos etc…) or even rely on customers to drive in to the airport. Airlines specialize in flying people from one airport to another that is their core competency (to fly people from one location to another in a economically effective manner with highest possible safety and accuracy). Another example is your physician. Physicians will take care of your general health and involve subject matter experts for their competencies. When you want to do cholesterol or sugar testing, doctor will recommend you to lab and will rely on lab to do the blood work. Ultimately Physician will interpret the results and decide the course of action (which is their core competency).
Good luck with the partnership and hope things work out for both of you.
Vish Agashe