by Howdy Everyone, welcome the boomi tool learning with me. I will write the article of how I learned boomi and what are all the things we need to know, best practices, practical examples, I will try to give easy real time examples. Without further a do lets get jump into the lesson,
What is Boomi?
The Boomi is the tool that helps to connecting each other cloud or on-premises applications.
Wait why boomi required to connect different application? Well, there are lot of tools/services available for this business problems among them Boomi is one of the powerful tool and it is like a translator between each other application, why translation required? There are different programming languages, formats, protocols followed for each applications. If Application A is built upon XML and Application B is built upon JSON, Now how to make connection these applications to talk each other, Here boomi comes and play a role to transfers the data between the applications.
So, boomi is a IpaaS solution that helps businesses to integrate various software applications. What is IpaaS? Integration Platform as a Service. What is Integration? It is the process to connect between different applications, databases so they can share their data and communicate seamless connection. So in simple terms, Integration is a bridge that connect one end to another end and ensure smooth flow between them.
How to Install boomi? Are they free?
Boomi is a cloud-based integration tool so it won’t require you to install any software in your machine. We can simply login through the web link https://platform.boomi.com. No Business is serve for free this is also charge based on the plan we select, but we can use this as free limited training account version. There we can use the tool and understand their functions, options, GUI etc.,
Why Boomi?
Over 300M cloud Integrations
Single Unified Platform
Easy to use
Flexible deployments
Security & Privacy concerns
It is a low-code tool which we can simply drag and drop the options and set a process workflow. It won’t require much coding knowledge to build a workflow or process.
Boomi was developed by Dell technologies now it is owned and managed by Francisco Partners and TPG Capital. There are lot of features properties and advantages boomi has,
Integration:
Rapidly connect two applications for transfer the data exchanges, this is used to maintain and sync the data between the different systems. It improves the efficiency and reduce the redundancy, scalability etc., Redundancy is nothing but unnecessary duplication of records occurs in data workflow or supply chains. Scalability is meant by a code will If handle a small amount of information is easily and manage, when the business is growing the code will work without breaking due to high amount of information. Information Vs. Data Well, information is collection of processed data or structured data, data is unprocessed, unstructured, raw type. (Ex: Retail, Manufacturing, Finance, HR, Healthcare, Banking, Marketing etc.,)
Master Data Hub:
It is a single source of truth as Centralize, Clean and Synchronize critical data across different systems.
For instance: A bank has different systems like CRM, Loan system etc., have customer details, In a real-world when a customer updated their address in the mobile banking that will not sync with other loan or CRM systems, this will create confusion, outdated information, different data across the systems. This leads to Data Silos. Data Silos is nothing but data is stored in one system but it does not shared or integrate with other system, this makes poor decision making in the business.
(Ex: HR, CRM, ERP etc.,)
Flow:
This is more of like automation in workflows and applications. Simple drag and drop feature to create a applications that will help to automate the workflow pipelines. Example: When a person joining in a office, there is a procedure HR team will manage those steps by manually collect documents from employee upload it to the relevant place and getting approval from the respective persons those are all done by boomi flow automatically. (Ex: Loan Application, Support systems, ticket approval, HR on-boaring/off-boarding etc.,)
B2B/EDI:
This is also a data exchange but the documents are in electronic EDI format. what is EDI? It is the computer-to-computer exchange of business documents in standardized electronic format between the organization. This increases the transfer speed, accuracy, security, compliance etc., The difference between Integration vs.B2B/EDI is Integration used for internal system connectivity & API based communication, B2B/EDI is used to external business transactions & EDI based communication.
For Example: A document needs to create and make it as EDI format and transfers to secured servers and the recipient can pick those files and process. A retailer send the Purchase Order, the supplier receives the order and sends as Invoice, Once the items are shipped send the notification. There many EDI formats are there, but the standard one like (EDI 850 – Purchase Order, EDI 810 – Invoice, EDI 856 – Advance Shipping Notice (ASN), EDI 997 -Functional acknowledgement, EDI 940 – Warehouse shipping order, EDI 944 – Warehouse stock transfer order) Industries like Healthcare, retail, finance, logistics used this method.
API Management:
It is used to design secure API to ensure the accessible in both internal and external applications. What is API? Application Program Interface is a messenger to one application talk to another application. In simple terms API management in boomi is we can create custom API for connecting applications. For ex: If an company has internal customer management system and wants to expose customer data on external mobile application, by using boomi API management we can do it.
Event Stream:
It is a mechanism that allows the integration to respond the events (new file being uploaded or change in the system) in real-time. This used to get the real-timely live data rather than batch processing (Periodical Process). When Immediate action is required like order processing, notification or system updates there event-stream is used to do instant action.
Boomi AI:
It is refers to the integration on artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities in boomi platform. This improves the decision making and gain insights to drive greater efficiency. Using AI model & ML modules to build and manage integrations and automation.
we will see each and every topic of these in upcoming threads. For now this is the quick introduction about the boomi. Follow this Learn thread for next topics.
