Integrate High Quality, Extensive SAP Data With Other Systems

Laura Cepeda, E3: How is Boomi positioning itself in the EMEA region to better support SAP customers going forward? 

Ann Maya, Boomi: Well, we have a technology, a part of our service called Boomi for SAP, and this is the ability to be able to connect SAP. So, we've been using that a lot with customers. We're able to help those customers integrate their data from their beautiful rich data within SAP with other systems. So, without having to code specifically in Abap. 

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"If you can't unlock the really valuable data you have in SAP, then you're really missing something.“

Ann Maya,
CTO,
Boomi

Cepeda: The EMEA region is incredibly fragmented, which I imagine must certainly be a challenge for you. There are different countries, different levels of SAP maturity. How do you manage to develop a uniform integration strategy in this chaos? 

Maya: I think that digital fragmentation is not unique to EMEA. I think it's pretty much everywhere. So, lots of organizations have this concern with the data being everywhere. Their APIs being everywhere and their apps being everywhere, and trying to find one way of unifying all of that data into one trusted foundation is something Boomi is really good at. Once you sort the data, the business will follow. So I think if you have siloed businesses, that's part of the business. But what you can do is bring the data together so you can draw insights across that business. Something we're doing within moving ourselves.

So, you know, I don't think that that's much of a concern. If you if you talk about fragmentation and talking to people in different regions and dealing with different cultures, well, that's a human problem, which I don't think it's a problem. I actually think it's really nice that you have different cultures and different languages, and that we're all finding the common language in AI, which is kind of cool. Actually, just even like a sideline for Boomi, just communicating, using like an AI translator is pretty fantastic as well. Like being able to Break down those bridges. The gaps that are between the different countries. Anyway, there are some differences across EMEA, like in some regions there might be more concerned about data sovereignty and data residency, like in Germany, for example or in in Saudi regions as well. So these are things that we're working with our customers and partners to overcome. And we've had some great success out there, being able to find solutions that will allow them to keep their data completely within their own realm.

Cepeda: Compared to the US, cloud adoption in EMEA is slower and more cautious. How does that impact Boomi’s SAP integration business in this region?

Maya: I don't think it's really impacted it so much. I think the key is that the big challenge there has always been being able to have different systems communicate with the data that's an SAP. So people are using SAP and they've been using it for years and years and years to house a lot of really valuable business data. 

The challenge has been for them to be able to take that data and share it externally, and then vice versa, bring external data back in unless it's compatible with the SAP system. If it isn't, they use that. So what we've been able to do is help them get past that. And it's opened up a lot of doors. So I'm not sure if I answered your question. 

Cepeda: What are the biggest concerns that companies have when it comes to the cloud?

Maya: There's the EU AI act that's coming up, but it's basically just a double click on GDPR. So GDPR plus and I think, you know, a lot of agencies or countries out there are maybe just a little bit afraid that if they use a cloud software that that could expose their data. But yeah, I think that's the main thing. It might be just concern about PII data or GDPR compliance. One thing we do have is,on our web page, we have a compliance page. We publish all the compliance certifications we have on our web page. We have a whole team that's dedicated to improving that and making sure what's new is on there. I think the latest security credentials we have are Cyber Essentials one and two. So, they're constantly updating this page and keeping it updated.

Cepeda: Which EMEA-specific innovations are you personally most excited about when it comes to SAP integration?

Maya: Good question. I'm not sure if we have any specific innovations for EMEA. Our team is global. And maybe I'll just talk a little bit about internal sausage making for a second. What we have is something called product interlock. So for all of our sales engineers and our salespeople out in the EMEA region, we have a dedicated session with the product team to talk about what we need in EMEA. So we don't have necessarily innovations. But Ed Macosky did in his keynote announce that we're putting a dedicated move instance in Europe, and this is something we fought for through the product interlock. And we've made it a priority. And so now they're going to deliver. So this will solve any sort of concerns about data sovereignty where the data needs to be in EMEA region. So we've been collecting that information which kind of customers want that and which countries are concerned about it. And we've used that to prioritize this roadmap. So, we're seeing that happen. 

Cepeda: Apart from Boomi, what trends are you currently observing in the area of SAP integration and hybrid IT landscapes?

Maya: The trends that we're seeing across the board is this move towards agents AI agents. I think that's a pretty much a global trend. We're hearing a lot more excitement I must say that based off the conversations in certain regions, I feel like the innovation isn't as accelerated as it is in the US, but the real excitement about it is still there. Like, people know that they need to embrace AI and AI agents. We are seeing some cool things being created by our customers. I think they're sticking more towards the retrieval augmented generation space, but there's a lot of excitement there. And I went recently to a different conference, and it's basically a logistics focused conference. 

Cepeda: What about robotics?

Maya: There's a lot of excitement growing about robotics. So, I think it was interesting in the keynote that we saw robot come up on stage. And the reason I say AI agents and AI is that that is now manifesting in the physical world as well. So, there are a lot of systems if you're going to move into the physical world that need to be supported. So, Trust Data Foundation is critical in all of that. We're not necessarily moving into robotics at I just think it's kind of a cool space that's trending right now.

But the solid thing, the one thing that does really matter, is having a trusted data foundation and ensuring that that data can stay up to date and add any new things being entered in will still continue to be absorbed, because that will be important in GDPR compliance or AI act compliance. Data will play a key part of that. How you protect what needs to be protected and how you ensure you have guardrails around that data as well.

E3: What key challenges do you currently see for companies working with SAP systems?

Maya: I think it's the same that we've always seen. The migration to S/4 Hana is still happening, right? This is something that a lot of our customers are currently challenged with. One of the things we're thinking about is that the amount of resources to get the S/4 Hana migration up and running, but also resources to be able to keep running their there as well. Some of those resources are expensive, so they need to get more automated in this process and less bespoke so that they can support these services going forward.

And they're not going to have a massive bill later on for resources, skills and labor that the skills that coding is very expensive. So being able to move towards a more agnostic model could be interesting. But you know, our SAP customers are quite happy. So they're using the technology. And I think there's going to be further investment in the SAP side of the product team. Last year we invested heavily in getting the Boomi for SAP moving forward, and we're going to keep doing that. I think adding event driven capability as well will be important there.

Cepeda: This means that SAP's clean-core approach is compatible with SAP's approach to integration.

Maya: Yes, it's compatible. This is why we are really embracing it. We're working with our customers to help them bridge that gap, because the ecosystem of tomorrow will have to be able to function in an agnostic way. We move forward into agentic systems. These systems need to be able to communicate with each other. If you can't unlock the really valuable data you have in SAP, then you're really missing something. So this is what Boomi is focusing on.

And because we can move across the different streams, we will be able to introduce AI functionality within that. And it's close to our data management solution. So some of the things we may be able to move forward in is coming closer together with data profiling. We mentioned there's data profiling agents within our data hub capability. We should at some point be able to match that with the SAP functionality too, so that we can bring all of that together.