IBM today announced it has acquired Cast Iron Systems to broaden the delivery of cloud computing services for clients. Cast Iron Systems, a privately held company based in Mountain View, CA, delivers industry-leading cloud integration software, appliances and services. Financial terms were not disclosed. The acquisition expands IBM’s industry-leading business process and integration software portfolio, which grew more than 20 percent in the first quarter of 2010.

Cast Iron Systems has completed thousands of cloud integrations around the world for financial institutions, media and entertainment companies and retail organizations. The company's clients include Allianz, NEC, Peet's Coffee & Tea, Dow Jones, Schumacher Group, ShoreTel, Sports Authority, Time Warner, Westmont University and many others.

Boomi Founder and CTO Rick Nucci explains to IT Business Edge's Loraine Lawson how competition, APIs and more involvement from IT departments are changing the cloud integration market.

 Lawson: When we talked in 2008, your CEO, Bob Mule, said Boomi was betting on integration being packaged by SaaS providers, rather than sought out by individual clients. Has that changed?
Nucci: It absolutely still is packaged. What has evolved is we’ve gotten more knowledgeable about what ISVs (independent software vendors) are really good at and what they aren’t. Absolutely, the number-one driver is ISVs want to be able to just say, “Here’s a pre-built integration to this application and here’s what it does.” They know that their sales cycle will get shorter, their implementation will be shorter, and the renewal rate will be higher because their app will be integrated.

I’ll give a couple of examples. Taleo uses Boomi to sell a packaged ADP integration. They use Boomi to sell a packaged Workday integration. They use Boomi to sell a package NetSuite Talio integration. Our Marketo partnership is to sell a packaged NetSuite integration, much like what they built for Salesforce.