Boomi is a platform for on-demand integration of software as a service. Until recently, all their tools for migrating and manipulating data from SaaS applications were self-service: you built a custom pipeline from point A to point B every time.
Now, business users with little-to-no coding ability can create connections between their favorite apps with Boomi Widgets that are pre-built. Speed and ease of integration is a major concern for SaaS use in the enterprise, and these widgets show great potential for streamlining that process.
The regular version of Boomi supports a full range of standard business software, from Quickbooks to Oracle Database and SAP ERP. Boomi’s widgets are basically browser-based GUI controllers for how information is ported from a SaaS application and either another software as a service or an on-premise solution. They make it easy for anyone with a little knowledge about how tables work to integrate enterprise software platforms and create a pipeline of information that is extensible.
Any Boomi customer can create one of these widgets from their integrations that already exist, and this should save businesses the time and energy usually invested in creating the same integrations over and over again.
Boomi also says that soon anyone will be able to create and sell a widget on their platform with a significant revenue share. However, it looks like currently only the Salesforce.com and Netsuite connections have been widgetized and offered on the site. Unless Boomi picks up the pace and gets a wider array of them out on the market, this isn’t going to create any kind of significant marketplace.
