Dell Boomi

Kommentare: Boomi is a point-and-click tool that has many features across a broad functional spectrum (e.g. Enterprise Service Bus, Web Service Gateway, Managed File Transfer, Messaging). You use a drag-and-drop interface to create processes, with no coding required (though you CAN use Groovy or JavaScript when needed). What can you do with it? You can: create and consume web services; perform database CRUD operations; get/send files over FTP/SFTP; read/write JMS queues; read/write to file systems (Linux, Windows, Mainframe, etc.); send/get email; read/parse/create EDI; etc. Nearly everything you do in an IT shop to integrate systems and applications you can do via Boomi. Boomi isn't ideal for everything. E.g. complicated ETL, voluminous file transfers, complicated processing, etc. But for the everyday IT tasks, Boomi is the perfect middleware tool. Simple tasks can be done in minutes with Boomi: read from a database to create a report and email it; call web services; web-service enable an existing process; create an enterprise web service that orchestrates a process; poll directories looking for files; poll JMS queues looking for messages; copy data between two applications; convert data from one format to another; in short - anything involving integrations between systems or applications can be done in Boomi. At my company we're starting to use Boomi for all middleware activities - it's fast and easy to create processes that perform a variety of tasks. Boomi does the heavy lifting, we just configure shapes, connect them together in a process flow, and then push it to production. Sometimes we have to use code (Groovy or JavaScript) to do complicated things that the tool doesn't natively do (e.g. date manipulation/calculation, call out to a Java Library to create a Java Web Token), but otherwise it seems to do everything we want to do. Nearly anything you can do in Java, .NET, python, perl, etc. you can do in Boomi with little or no coding. Boilerplate development (like creating data services, extracting data to files, running scheduled tasks, etc.) can all be done in minutes or hours in Boomi rather than days or weeks in traditional programming languages. Boomi doesn't replace all of your tools - but it replaces 80% of what you do with those tools and it takes 20% of the time to do it. I'm convinced that it's the future of traditional IS development.

Vorteile: Ease of use, simplicity of the programming paradigm, and the vast capabilities of the product.

Nachteile: It doesn't implement everything in a given spec (e.g. I can't access the full request/response for a web service call; I can't use all features of standard functionality like SMB; etc.) The tool needs to mature a bit more so that it can be leveraged more in a variety of enterprises.

Kommentare: We've used Dell Boomi to support Re-pricing and Order management integration over the past several years. Our processes submit approx. 1-2 million API calls a day to our ERP and marketplace channel management platforms. The most important thing I can say about Boomi is the peace of mind it brings...Once you get a process built and tested...it's just works! I worry about all of our other platforms going down or cringe when new updates are released. I've never had that worry with Boomi. They perform monthly releases, and I've never had a release break one of our processes. Given the range of tools available to construct integration processes, there is almost always a way to accomplish a process. Typically the challenge becomes picking the best way to solve the problem with the various options available. One thing that has drastically improved over the past year or two is the information/knowledge base and participation of the Boomi user community. Several years ago if you had questions on how to do something, it would take a while to figure things out. The new Community platform is thriving with lots of very useful information to help beginners get started building processes. The only negative I've ever had and continue to have is cost. Depending on the number of connections (distinct endpoints) you require for your integration needs, things can get expensive quickly. This is one area in which I wish Boomi would get creative. Even if you are using basic local DISK connections or simple HTTP endpoint connections (as opposed to branded connectors such as SF.com, or Netsuite), every endpoint will cost you an additional $300/month. Some pricing-flexibility on bundling certain types of connectors would be a great improvement. For this reason I deducted some stars in the "Value For Money" rating. However, I'll end by re-iterating my opening comments. That cost delivers a huge benefit...Boomi is a robust, stable platform, and you will achieve piece of mind for your integrations that run within it.

Vorteile: Development environment.

Nachteile: Cost