While Shopify (TSX,NYSE:SHOP) was announcing another round of layoffs today, an American company that integrates enterprise software, like Shopify, for some 20,000 businesses around the world was in Vancouver doing the opposite: hiring.
Boomi, which specializes in integrating and automating enterprise software and applications, is setting up shop in Vancouver.
The company has three potential office locations in Vancouver in mind for its new sales, marketing and business development office, and plans to have it open by August 1.
“It will be in downtown Vancouver,” said Boomi chief commercial officer Greg Wolfe. “There’s some fantastic space available.”
The company plans to hire 100 people, with a heavy focus on sales, marketing, and business development.
Boomi CEO Steve Lucas described Boomi as a kind of “Google translate” for business applications like Shopify, Salesforce, SAP, Oracle NetSuite and Slack. Later this year, it plans to add Chat GPT into its integration platform.
“We can let any software speak the language of any other software,” Lucas said. “That’s really what we are -- is an integration platform that lets anything talk to anything.”
Headquartered in Philadelphia, Boomi has 12 global offices and a workforce of 1,700. It chose Vancouver for a new sales and marketing “centre of excellence” largely because of Vancouver’s tech talent pool, as well as senior executive ties to Vancouver.
Both Lucas and Wolfe worked for Crystal Solutions, the Vancouver software company that was acquired in 2003 by Business Objects, which was then acquired by SAP in 2007. Wolfe was head of sales for Crystal Decisions and Lucas was a systems engineer. That history partly explains why Boomi is setting up its new office in Vancouver.
“I think the why Vancouver is a) the talent, but b) the history of Crystal-Business Objects-SAP that has created a fairly unique base of data and analytic knowledgeable people within the market,” Lucas said. “It’s kind of a unique convergence of those two dimensions.”
“He had a taste, and I had a taste – a decade – of running a tech company here in Vancouver, and we grew to recognize the benefits of a highly qualified workforce that competes very well internationally,” Wolfe said. “We think there’s some surplus of great talent.”
Several of Boomi’s executive team -- including Wolfe and its chief technology officer and chief marketing officer -- live in Vancouver.
Boomi was founded in 2000, acquired by Dell Technologies (NYSE:DELL), and later spun out again as a stand-alone company.
"We're thrilled to welcome Boomi to Vancouver as a new member of our city's rapidly expanding tech sector," Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim said in a press release. "Boomi's decision to bring jobs and investment here further demonstrates Vancouver growth as a global hub for technology and innovation."
