Another tech company is betting on Conshohocken — not Center City — for its new headquarters

With 1,700 employees in the United States, Canada, India, and 19 other countries, and Silicon Valley private-equity owners who bet $4 billion on its continued growth three years ago, Boomi is one of the most successful software makers to emerge from the Philadelphia region in the past 25 years.

The company simplifies the frantic networks of software apps, data, people, processes, and fast-updating artificial-intelligence systems that businesses rely on to speed and track products, customers, dollars, and staff.

Now it has a headquarters building of its own in Conshohocken, the Montgomery County factory suburb turned corporate office center where it moved earlier this year from an office park in Berwyn.

“When you get to that half-billion-dollar a year size, you have to put your best foot forward for all the customers you bring to your office” and to build your work teams, said Steve Lucas, a software executive who took over as Boomi CEO last year and presided over the headquarters’ symbolic opening on Wednesday.

“We connect anything and everything,” Lucas boasted. “Legacy systems, cloud and internet platforms, companies that straddle both. And now this new world of artificial intelligence” that companies need to build products and apply data faster.

Lucas demonstrated on his phone how from a simple query, Boomi can build an integrated order-processing platform linking Shopify orders with NetSuite accounting and inventory, or splice Workday hiring software into Salesforce enterprise systems.

“Hit ‘Go.’ It just knows,” Lucas said. The application and a flow chart flash onto the screen.

Is this quick-build software reliable? “If someone breaks it, this will fix itself,” Lucas promised.

New AI-backed Boomi products produce automated software documentation to speed up some of programmers’ most onerous tasks. Lucas described a corporate arms race, in which companies feel compelled to add AI-enhanced applications or worry they’ll be squeezed out of markets.

A next step is for Boomi to flash new integration offers onto users’ screens, anticipating their needs before they ask. It’s not the lowest-priced of its competitors, but it’s highly rated by industry analysts at tech consultant Gartner.

Lucas said Boomi’s sales revenues in recent years have leapfrogged those of rival software integration platforms sold by his former company, SAP, as well as Microsoft, Informatica, and Salesforce’s MuleSoft unit. Only Oracle is larger among “iPaaS” (Integration Platform as a Service) sellers, he said.

Boomi was drawn to downtown Conshohocken because of its constellation of restaurants and hotels, mid-rise apartment blocks, old brick rowhouses, converted factories, new back-of-the-block parking garages — and corporate headquarters and tech company offices.

The company’s new building is on Fayette Street next door to drug-shipping giant Cencora (formerly AmerisourceBergen) across the Schuylkill from the I-76/476 junction, uphill from rival Oracle’s regional office box.

Lucas spends much of his time flying between his Denver home, and the company’s scattered offices and corporate customers. He was a frequent visitor to Philadelphia’s western suburbs when he worked at SAP, when chief executive Bill McDermott ran that global business-software company from its U.S. headquarters in Newtown Square. Lucas later held senior jobs at Marketo, Adobe, Salesforce, and iCIMS, among others.

Conshohocken “is incredibly accessible” to suburban drivers, transit users, and executives who travel a lot, Lucas said. The building has an employee parking pad and neighboring garage.

A SEPTA train station is a short walk south, though staff commuting from Philadelphia complain there are too few trains and too many delays. The airport is a half-hour ride, down the Blue Route and up I-95, when traffic isn’t jammed.

“I love this neighborhood — the vibrancy, the scene, the incredible accessibility,” Lucas said. “It all drives the impression Boomi is a very valuable software company.”

Why didn’t Boomi choose the region’s longtime business hub, Philadelphia, just eight miles away and full of empty office space post-pandemic?

Boomi considered Center City, Lucas said, but after more than a decade in Berwyn, “when we looked at a heat map of where everybody lives, this looked like the most accessible” location for current staff.

Around 200 Boomi managers, engineers, and other staff are expected to work in the office every Wednesday, plus two other days a week, varying with their work groups. (Staff in Vancouver, a similarly sized office, come in every day, which Lucas says is especially useful for young engineering teams.)

He noted that many of Boomi’s top managers, including marketing chief Alison Biggan, sales executive Greg Wolfe, and chief financial officer Arlen Shenkman, are people he learned to trust while working with them in old-style, in-person office teams years ago.

Local political and business-group leaders on hand last week welcomed a new headquarters and more downtown workers at a grand-opening ceremony.

“All this enthusiasm!” said Tiffany Wilson, chief of staff for State Sen. Vincent Hughes (D., Phila.), whose district extends up the Schuylkill to Conshohocken. “I feel like I’m at a basketball game.”

“To see a company like this coming into Conshohocken is just incredible,” Mayor Yaniv Aronson added, crediting the borough council with speeding all needed building and parking approvals, even when they weren’t popular with all residents. “They created the environment that makes companies want to move here.”

Boomi isn’t completely new to Conshohocken. Founding CEO Bob Moul said the start-up located over a local pizza shop before the move to Berwyn, where Boomi grew rapidly as part of Dell Computer until it was sold to its private-equity owners in 2021. Longtime chief executive Chris McNabb retired after Dell sold the company. His initial replacement, David Meredith, left after a year.

Lucas says it’s a good sign that Oracle’s building is nearby, as if to ratify his company’s choice to locate in the neighborhood.

“This is where we want to be — facing off against our rivals,” Lucas said. “Healthy competition means you’ve got a healthy industry.”