Building an integration platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) service delivered via the cloud is one thing. Making it possible for end users to invoke that platform on their own is quite another. To achieve that latter goal, Dell Boomi has announced it has acquired ManyWho, a provider of low-code service used to automate workflows across a variety of enterprise use cases.
Dell Boomi CEO Chris McNabb says the acquisition of ManyWho makes it possible for Dell Boomi to extend the reach of its cloud integration service all the way out to sophisticated end users via an HTML5-based workflow engine. The end goal, says McNabb, is to dramatically reduce the complexity associated with integrating data across multiple applications in terms of the technologies that need to be deployed as well as the number and types of people required to make it happen.
“It shouldn’t take a team of software engineers to deliver on a big idea,” says McNabb.
A raft of startups coupled with existing providers of iPaaS service providers looking to extend their reach are collectively moving to reduce the amount of time and effort IT organizations need to allocate to integration. There will always be some set of integration tasks that will require the skills of a professional developer. But increasingly, more routine integration projects can be accomplished by end users within the confines of a specific workflow framework.
Of course, there are still a host of compliance issues that typically need to be addressed in terms of what data can be combined when. But by and large, the days when IT departments had massive backlogs of integration projects that were not especially complicated to complete are coming to an end, which should free up a lot more developers to concentrate on more challenging projects that hopefully provide a lot more value to the business.
