Dell Boomi wins Australian deals with UTS, Fred Hollows Foundation and Study Group

Dell Boomi has revealed three new deployments of its integration platform-as-a-service to new clients in the education and non-profit sectors.

University of Technology Sydney (UTS), The Fred Hollows Foundation and academic training firm Study Group have chosen the Boomi integration platform as part of their broader cloud strategy.

“We’ve had a fantastic year in 2017 as we’ve taken on a significant number of new clients and partners,” Dell Boomi managing director for Asia-Pacific and Japan Michael Evans said.

“I think we’ve really changed the perception of our business in the last 12 months, with people not knowing about us at first, but we are starting to generate interest.”

UTS approached Dell Boomi as part of chief information officer Christine Burns’ cloud-led Application 2020 strategy, which in the past 18 months had seen a series of new cloud platform implementations.

“The Boomi platform fits neatly with our strategy because it is a single complete package that can manage the complex integration that we sometimes require, while at the same time being able to do so much more without the need for in-depth programming capabilities or heavy management,” said David O’Connor, manager for IT enterprise architecture and strategic planning at UTS.

“The ability for us to make our data more accessible and move it as necessary across these cloud services in a secure manner via APIs is absolutely critical. Boomi gives us the agility we need in this space.”

He added that Application 2020 called for implementing a simpler application architecture powered by cloud technologies, which “will become the foundation for building a new generation of digital services and experiences for our students and staff”.

Evans added that Dell Boomi has also been in talks with several other Australian universities, which the company will reveal in the coming months. Flinders University announced a Boomi deployment in September last year.

Meanwhile, Australian charity The Fred Hollows Foundation approached Dell Boomi for integration needs aligned to its 100 percent cloud model, aiming for more control over and access to critical data.

“To make better use of our data, we have moved legacy applications from in-house servers to private and now to public cloud environments combined with a software-as-a-service (SaaS) first policy for new applications,” Luke Van Leeuwen, associate director of technology and business services for The Fred Hollows Foundation said.

“But stitching this type of hybrid environment together is a major challenge when you consider the variety of clouds and SaaS applications that don’t necessarily connect very easily. Boomi helped us overcome this hurdle, ensuring that data is synchronised across our applications no matter where they are accessed from.”

The non-profit has connected its human resources platform with other systems such as active directory, email, file services and workflows in real-time with Dell Boomi’s iPaaS offering.

It allows employees located in different parts of the world — particularly those in remote areas — remain resourced to perform their time-sensitive jobs. The deployment was influential in the charity’s new project and program management system.

“The Fred Hollows Foundation delivers life-changing outcomes to patients all around the world, but the nature of such a geographically-dispersed operation creates a number of data access and sharing challenges,” Evans said.

“Boomi’s native cloud platform supports the foundation’s global operations to ensure critical information is available to its personnel no matter their location, meaning treatments and surgeries can be conducted more efficiently, and positive patient outcomes can be optimised.”

Meanwhile UK-headquartered education services provider Study Group approached Dell Boomi to replace a series of on-premises integrations which it said inhibited the accuracy and frequency of data.

“We have very long sales cycles — in many cases up to a year — so data moves between different systems as students go through different stages of their learning journey,” Marty Grant, global head of delivery and architecture for Study Group said.

“In the past, our on-premises integrations risked data getting out of sync or taking a long time to update across the board – and due to the complexity of the approach, it was difficult to identify and amend an issue when it occurred.”

He said the company is at a point where there is full visibility over data, making employees “more productive” and “further boosted trust” in their systems from agent-partners. “That’s important when you consider 80 percent of our business comes through that channel.”

“Delivering memorable education experiences to a network of students as large as Study Group’s involves countless moving parts, and technology simply can’t get in the way,” Michael Evans added.

“With Boomi’s integration platform linking core business applications and the information they contain, Study Group is able to improve the student experience in every aspect of their interaction from enrolment through to graduation.”