UPDATED 14:23 EDT / DECEMBER 17 2019

BIG DATA

Dell’s Boomi acquires data wrangling startup Unifi to boost iPaaS platform

Dell Technologies Inc.’s Boomi subsidiary is buying Unifi Software Inc., a provider of artificial intelligence-powered data management tools that has raised close to $50 million in venture funding.

Boomi didn’t disclose the price tag in the acquisition announcement today. The buyout comes not long after Unifi’s most recent round of funding, a $17 million investment in April that coincided with a major leadership shakeup. Former Oracle Corp. head of business development Matt Mosman took the helm as chief executive officer and industry veteran Intekhab Nazeer assumed the role of chief financial office.

Mosman said at the time that he’s joining to spearhead the “next chapter of company growth at Unifi.” Boomi’s offer must have been fairly sizable if it convinced Unifi to sell just eight months after it raised funding and hired new leadership to pursue that growth opportunity. 

Boomi sells an iPaaS, or integration platform as a service, suite that helps enterprises integrate disconnected systems with one another, share data between them and manage this data. Unifi, in turn, offers two data management tools that use AI to automate repetitive tasks. The first tool, Data Catalog, organizes records from different sources in a centralized list to enable easier access for analysts, while the second, Unified Data Platform, provides the same features but with added data preparation capabilities.

Unifi’s solutions are underpinned by its OneMind machine learning engine. OneMind provides advice, like suggestions for how to organize data in a way that eases searches, and automates tasks such as reconciling formatting differences between records.

Boomi plans to integrate Unifi’s capabilities directly into its iPaaS suite. “The addition of data catalog and preparation [features] to the Boomi integration platform helps the customer discover, describe, trust, and prepare the data to find more value out of it and innovate,” Thameem Khan, Boomi’s director of product strategy, wrote in a blog post.

The Unifi acquisition is part of a broader effort by Boomi to expand the data management features of its solution. Besides adding more tools analysts can use to analyze their records, the company is also working to simplify their workflow through initiatives such as its recent voice partnership with Accenture plc.

Boomi CEO Chris McNabb (pictured) shared more details about his company’s roadmap in an October interview on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE Studio (below).

“Accenture brings the conversational AI experience technology and solutions to the table and we’re now linking and partnering that into our integration capabilities and connective capabilities,” McNabb told theCUBE hosts John Furrier and Lisa Martin. “As a net result, people can talk to their phone and interact with their workflows and interact with their data stores to get data, approve workflows et cetera.” 

Photo: SiliconANGLE

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