Dell Boomi To Bring Enterprise-Class MDM To Clouds in 2012 
In 2012, Dell Boomi will offer a cloud-based master data management (MDM) capability to extend its cloud integration platform. The new MDM offering aims to let customers quickly build and manage a cloud-based master datastore that will synchronize data across multiple cloud, SaaS and on-premise apps.
In 2012, Dell Boomi will offer a cloud-based master data management (MDM) capability to extend its cloud integration platform. The new MDM offering aims to let customers quickly build and manage a cloud-based master datastore that will synchronize data across multiple cloud, SaaS and on-premise apps.
Dell Boomi’s entirely cloud-based approach to MDM aims to expand the options and simplify the tasks for master data for customers, products, partners and other key datasets, according to Dell Boomi CTO Rick Nucci.
“Integrating applications and data between the cloud and onsite will mean that solutions also will need MDM capabilities to ensure consistency and management of all that data,” Nucci told IDN. By developing a cloud-based MDM, Dell Boomi aims to streamline data synchronization practices across an organization, including often partitioned and segmented cloud-based apps and datastores, he added.
Dell Boomi’s focus on MDM arises as customers of its cloud integration offerings continue to ask for solutions to improve data synchronization and data quality – especially across multiple SaaS and on-premise apps, Nucci said. “Our customers are telling us loud and clear they want us to address their need for a data master between cloud and on-premise. MDM is the next wave of benefit that cloud integration needs to deliver, and the capabilities will definitely be a key checkbox for customers,” he added.
Dell Boomi’s plan to offer MDM also signals an ever-growing embracing by customers of a “hybrid” computing model where SaaS applications need to be tied together with on-premise apps and data. “In the on-premise world, a customer [data] master is a fundamental component of a mission-critical ERP system. This is where enterprises actively looking at cloud and on-premise integration are starting to go,” Nucci noted.
Dell Boomi’s cloud-based MDM approach aims to help customers avoid the need for costly on-premise hardware and software. Further, it will help customers address a full lifecycle of MDM-related tasks -- from setup, configuration and management -- using a simple web interface.
Modeling : The ability to define and model all of your master data to your needs;
Storage: Long-term, secure storage of all master data. Dell Boomi will provide cloud storage or enable customers to setup their own master datastores. For example, Dell Boomi will support database.com upon initial launch;
“Integrating applications and data between the cloud and onsite will mean that solutions also will need MDM to ensure consistency and management of all that data.”
Rick Nucci, CTO, Dell Boomi
Synchronization: Working in concert with Boomi AtomSphere, this MDM will have the ability to synchronize the relevant changes made to master data across applications as needed, with intelligence that identifies the system of record for corresponding sets of data; and
Validation: Dell Boomi's MDM will provide a means to discover and reconcile duplicate records, while also enriching data as it is being managed to fill in missing or incomplete information.
Inside Dell Boomi’s Cloud-Based MDM
To IT professionals familiar with MDM, Dell Boomi’s approach may sound a bit simplistic – or even hard to believe. How, some might ask, does Dell Boomi’s cloud-based MDM capture and deliver all that canonical intelligence and data mapping information MDM solutions often require.
It turns out a lot of “secret sauce” to Dell Boomi’s cloud-based MDM is found in two key technologies, already part of the company’s current cloud integration solution:
- Boomi Atom A runtime engine that executes a complete end-to-end integration process. It also maintains ongoing communication with Boomi’s core AtomSphere metadata-based integration platform to communicate information about integration executions in real-time, records activities and even checks for updates; and
- Boomi Suggest. A suggestion wizard for data mapping that lets customers tap into the amassed knowledge of Dell Boomi’s user community on best approaches and suggestions for canonical and data mappings. Boomi Suggest makes available for reuse more than 50,000 successful data maps and 13,000 map functions. Beyond this, Boomi Suggest can make recommendations for new mappings using ranking algorithms derived from mappings and metadata analysis. Combining these two proven cloud integration technologies, and optimizing them for MDM, Dell Boomi is well positioned to deliver an efficient and effective cloud-based master data solution for consistent and near real-time data synch and data quality, Nucci told IDN.
“In our MDM, we’ll store all the master data as a separate Atom that has pre-built connectivity to all other local datastores, whether on-premise or in the cloud,” Nucci said. “So, in this approach, a user can easily update their data to the Boomi MDM or datastore, as well as store or download as they wish.” The Dell Boomi cloud-based MDM would also provide near real-time updates in any direction across all connected systems – maintaining the core MDM data master up to date with all upstream or downstream apps, he added.
Combining Dell Boomi Atom runtime and Boomi Suggest will also provide one extra benefit to customers – a ready set of ‘suggested’ data and canonical models for sharing data across different apps and different syntax.
“With traditional MDM, so much time is spent building and defining data masters and canonical formats, it’s a never ending process,” Nucci said. “We intend to use Boomi Suggest’s library [of more than 50,000 data and canonical mappings] and Boomi Atoms to start with a baseline and then automate much of the process.”
Nucci envisions a customer use case where end users can leverage their existing data models or baseline customer master records from SalesForce.com (such as in an account ‘object’), and from that customer input, Dell Boomi’s MDM will provide the integration and data mapping to sync that data with other systems.
The Dell Boomi deployment model comes from experiences with existing cloud integration customers. “Our customers are using [Boomi] Suggest right now to create their own metastores for their own cloud integration projects,” Nucci said. “And, in turn, they are teaching us how to correlate thousands of fields and pieces of metadata together. Adding to that, we put that valuable knowledge about data together with our [Atom] connector technology and we have the makings of a mission-critical, virtualized metastore customers can run and manage right from the cloud. It will be very simple yet powerful.”
For security, Dell Boomi’s cloud-based MDM will offer customers a private single instance, running on a cost-effective cloud-based multi-tenant environment. The cloud-based MDM will also offer customers a “portable” master datastore to allow the MDM to support a wide range SaaS/on-premise application combinations.
Dell Boomi’s cloud-based MDM is currently in beta testing, and is slated to be available by mid-2012.
