While AI governance is often framed as a way to reduce risk, Boomi’s APAC CTO, David Irecki said more mature organisations now see governance as an enabler of value.
“Because if you put good governance in place, the agents are going to work better, they are going to provide better outcomes, better answers, and users are going to trust them more… it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy that there’s greater investment.”
So, the growing emphasis on governance is not theoretical, and he cited Omdia research which finds 60-percent of Malaysian firms already have AI-specific policies in place, while in general that figure is 50-percent.
One can even go so far as to say that organisations that treat governance as foundational are more likely to scale AI beyond pilots into production.
The role of data
Thanks to strategic acquisitions that bolster their data management portfolio, David explained that Boomi is not just about connecting applications these days.
“We help organisations take data that’s spread across ERP, CRM, HR, finance systems, and make it usable in real time for workflows, decision-making, and increasingly AI agents.”
We talk about the readiness gap a lot. There’s fear of missing out and pressure from the C‑suite to ‘do something with AI’. But without that data activation platform underneath, they’re not able to scale from pilot to production.
David Irecki
According to David, a major reason AI projects fail to progress is the “integration gap” which shows up in a few ways – data and systems are not properly connected which leads to AI not reliably getting the right, updated data when it needs it. Boomi also believes that there is a lack of governance and a consistent way to control who or which agent can access what data and systems, under what conditions.
Also lacking is a robust integration layer.
Data activation
David said, “Data provides context but access control and the quality of the data is what really makes the difference. So, having the right data in the right place at the right time is going to be key.”
This is reflected in how Boomi now organises its capabilities into four core pillars – integration, data management, API management, governance – on top of which is what Boomi calls the data activation layer where trusted data is made available to enterprise workflows, be they driven by humans or AI.
“We talk about the readiness gap a lot. There’s fear of missing out and pressure from the C‑suite to ‘do something with AI’. But without that data activation platform underneath, they’re not able to scale from pilot to production.”
“After the Lunar.dev acquisition, there is probably more (features) on the data side,” he said. Lunar.dev is an AI/MCP gateway company Boomi has announced intent to acquire to bolster its AI gateway and model routing capabilities.
With its capabilities, Boomi can “…essentially give enterprises more governance, more observability, and more control around how AI is going to interact with their data and applications.”
Looking slightly further ahead, David hinted that Boomi’s roadmap will involve doubling down on data.
“Data provides context; quality and access control are what really make the difference. Having the right data in the right place at the right time is going to be key.”
