Boomi outgrows its home
Boomi was a pioneer cloud-computing company, 30 engineers and salespeople in a hillside office north of Berwyn. It sold blue-chip clients like Siemens and JPMorgan its AtomSphere-brand software, uniting and updating email, HR, sales, and inventory, via remote servers, faster and cheaper than on-site systems.
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Boomi
was a pioneer cloud-computing company, 30 engineers and salespeople in a hillside office north of Berwyn. It sold blue-chip clients like
Siemens
and
JPMorgan
its AtomSphere-brand software, uniting and updating email, HR, sales, and inventory, via remote servers, faster and cheaper than on-site systems.
Then Dell Computer bought it from founder Rick Nucci, boss Bob Moul, and investors led by New York's FirstMark Capital in 2010.
The cloud was the future, said Dell boss Michael Dell. He told the engineers he bought Boomi to grow it, not to make it disappear. Not like those start-ups that melt after the buyer lays 10-million-dollar bills on founders' and investors' desks and leaves town with code, customers, and patents pending.
Dell did what he said. "We'll have over 300 people" by this year's end, half in Berwyn - including software research and development - the rest in offices from California to India, Chris McNabb, general manager of Dell Boomi, said last week.
"I think Dell could get $1 billion for Boomi if they sell it," says Moul, now CEO of Philadelphia-based Cloudamize. He notes Dell sold other software units as it prepared last week's $67 billion merger with EMC, but kept Boomi, at least for now. McNabb says 150 of the Fortune 500 now use Dell Boomi in some form.
So McNabb is looking for larger offices in the neighborhood.
He sees no need to move to California, or New York - or Philadelphia: McNabb says it's not so hard persuading talented millennials, or his Penn and Drexel interns, to work in the heart of the region's tech community off U.S. 202, near Ametek and Lockheed Martin, Siemens and TE Connectivity, Trinseo, and Vanguard Group.
As part of Dell, Boomi is a growing province in a $74 billion (yearly sales) personal computer, server and data-storage empire that faces tough competition from Apple, Amazon, and other giants.
Meeting with investors Wednesday, Michael Dell singled out Boomi as a fast-growing unit that "will develop and grow organically within Dell Technologies," to "remain nimble and agile and ultimately gain market share," as machines are learning to talk to people and other machines, and "the marginal cost of making something intelligent [like your washing machine] is approaching zero."
With 140,000 employees in 180 countries, 1,800 service centers, and 25 factories, Dell calls itself the world's largest privately controlled technology company.
"We're a bunch of independent, federated software companies," McNabb says. "The flexibility, agility, and focus you get by being independent, and the limited bureaucracy that comes with that, allows us to move very rapidly. That gives us competitive advantage in our marketplace. We can act a bit more like a start-up."
Temenos expands. Since buying the Malvern-based credit-union software maker Akcelerant for $50 million (plus growth incentives) two winters ago, the Switzerland-based bank-software maker Temenos has boosted employment at the business to 160, from 130.
Last week, Temenos moved the unit from its old offices at 100 Lindenwood Dr. to 40 General Warren Blvd., where Akcelerant founder Jay Mossman is now Temenos' CEO for North America.
At an outdoor rally Wednesday, Temenos boss David Arnott promised staff "an ambitious growth strategy." Temenos expects to employ up to 500 at the site by 2021.
215-854-5194 @PhillyJoeD