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Boomi is adding support for multicloud and hybrid cloud deployments to its Flow workflow automation service. Flow is part of Boomi's popular cloud-based iiPaaS (integration-as-a-service). 

Thanks to this latest update, Boomi Flow now provides companies with built-in protection for sensitive data used with application and workflow components across multicloud architectures. In turn, this lets companies quickly add "trusted engagement" support to their customer, employee and partner relationships, Manoj Gujarathi, Boomi’s director of product management, told IDN. 

"Boomi Flow's multicloud capabilities allow customers to achieve greater control over business data,” he added.  Such data includes data that is entered into a workflow by a person or system; it also includes data loaded from an external endpoint using one or more integrated systems.

The new capabilities also mean Boomi Flow can support data control and security, alongside deployment flexibility. As an example, users can run apps from private clouds while leveraging all the design benefits and conveniences of a cloud-native workspace, Gujarathi added. 

How Boomi Flow Provides Data Control and Security with Deployment Flexibility

Notably, these benefits arose because this multicloud support extends Boomi Flow's existing capabilities for applications running in cloud, hybrid and on-premises deployments, Gujarathi noted. The multicloud support is architected for easy synchronization and a minimal on-prem footprint to avoid future migration challenges, he added.

Boomi Flow’s support for multiclouds comes as organizations face pressure to increasing engage with multiple personas – and do it across a range of locations and devices, Gujarathi noted. As a result, a company's ability to provide "trusted user engagement" goes a long way in determining its ability to deliver successful digital transformation projects and reputations. 

Gujarathi explained how Boomi Flow's way of supporting trusted data provides a hard-to-achieve balance of control and flexibility.  

Flow empowers customers to streamline operations with "one-touch deployment," as well as control data movement and govern sensitive data.  This lets companies create custom workflows to meet business needs, while maintaining compliance with corporate policies and government regulations that govern data protection, Gujarathi noted.  

Gujarathi also shared details on Boomi Flow's technology and operations under-the-covers.  

With multicloud support, Boomi Flow provides control to customers for their business data and gives customers the flexibility to reside in the runtime environment that they define, instead of transitioning that through Boomi Flow cloud. 

 

The configuration data, which is JSON metadata defining the workflow orchestration, is created during workflow building in Flow cloud. This configuration data provides instructions to the runtime environment on how to execute the flows. This way, the flows can be built in the cloud and executed with no cloud dependency in the customer's chosen runtime environment.

 

By using Flow's multicloud features, customers can execute their application workloads locally, within their network perimeter. This provides additional security and protection for both keeping data within the organization's network and removes the need for customers to expose endpoints externally, providing increased security and less IT overhead to manage firewall policies.

 

Boomi Flow encrypts business data during transmission using standard SSL protocols such as TLS, including the ability to encrypt at rest. 

Up Close Look at Boomi Flow's End-to-End Data Protection, Policy Protection 

Notably, Boomi Flow also provides companies granular controls over rules and policies and deep monitoring and powerful alerting during runtime. Gujarathi shared key operational details for how Boomi Flow enforces rules and policies, as well as alerting and monitoring at runtime: 

For Rules and Policies: Boomi Flow allows customers to set rules and policies for compliance through its organization and tenancy settings. Users can set up regional restrictions for access to the flows within a tenant for build time accessing or execution time. 

Users can also set up IP address restrictions for execution and draw, admin, and package access to the flows within a tenant, he added. "You can allow access to only those users who can login with the selected identity service, or you can create restrictions for specific users and groups of users," Gujarathi told IDN. 

Flow also provides "swimlanes" features where access within a workflow component can be restricted to a set of users, he added. Flow also offers single sign-on (SSO) using SAML authentication.

 For Monitoring/Alerting: Boomi Flow provides many reporting and alerting capabilities and debugging and logging capabilities. It also offers built-in dashboards for monitoring. 

"The dashboard shows flows launched within a user's tenant, and allows a user to drill down into individual flows to view detailed flow state and service log information," Gujarathi said. Users can also view the requests that Boomi Flow makes to services using the dashboard. 

 As for alerting, Boomi Flow covers various warnings, faults, as well tenant settings, password changes and new provisioning and deletions. Boomi Flow's reporting also provides rich, actionable details for such alerts. 

"Boomi Flow also provides reporting capabilities which allow you to analyze, store, and query state data using your own PostgreSQL database or analytics user interface. Boomi Flow also provides a built-in auditing page which provides an audit view of the events logged within your tenant, and allows you to drill down into the event metadata," Gujarathi added. 

"Our customers have been clamoring for a multicloud solution that creates integrated experiences and enables digital engagement with their audiences in a seamless way," said Ed Macosky, head of product at Boomi.

"With Flow, organizations can seamlessly deploy and automate workflows and applications across diverse environments in ways that best fit their architectures. The net result is the ability to personalize the customer journey for different personas, creating unique avenues of interaction that build up brand loyalty," Macosky added.