Ok – I was quick to give you my thoughts on the IBM acquisition of Cast Iron so to avoid the charge of hypocrisy, here are my thoughts on the Dell acquisition of Boomi.
As was my reaction to IBM/Cast Iron, this deal makes a ton of sense for both Dell and Boomi. We’ve had a growing relationship with Dell for some time now and today’s announcement is the next step in the natural evolution of that partnership. Dell is in the midst of making a major move into cloud computing. They’ve spent a significant amount of time talking to customers and they clearly have market permission to enter this space on a broad scale. With millions of businesses as customers, the install base alone represents an incredible opportunity.
Dell also represents a very attractive and legitimizing channel for SaaS and cloud companies to get their offerings to market. The acquisition of Boomi is one step in Dell’s strategy to build a technology portfolio to help businesses address the challenges of adopting and managing SaaS and Cloud solutions. It’s a very logical move because Boomi addresses one of the top (and arguably no. 1) challenges which is application integration.
Here’s another thing that resonated with me: Dell views SaaS and cloud computing as disrupting the traditional software space much like Dell’s direct channel strategy disrupted the traditional hardware space. Disruption is something Dell knows a little something about and that thought made me smile.
Finally, Dell views cloud integration (the real multi-tenant kind) as a fundamental building block of SaaS and cloud computing. Our respective views on the challenges and opportunities in the space are remarkably alike. One of the most exciting things to us is that Dell will provide us with a global platform to accelerate the growth of our business and continue to be the market leader in SaaS and cloud integration.
It will be business as usual here. The entire Boomi team will transition to Dell upon closing. There are no changes to Boomi’s leadership team or reporting structure and you will continue to work with all the same great folks you’ve come to know and love. And stayed tuned to hear more about Dell’s cloud strategy in the very near future.
Bottom line is that the Boomi team is thrilled to be joining the Dell family. This is a fantastic outcome not only for our team but for our partners and customers as well. To all of our customers, partners, supporters and friends, we say thank you for all your support over the past many years. And thanks for the literally hundreds of emails and well wishes that are pouring in – we are very flattered. We look forward to continuing to work with you in the months and years ahead as we take the next step in our journey to revolutionize the world of integration...
