Partners at the center of Boomi’s push to unlock APAC’s AI potential
“The opportunity is how well you can explain a value proposition to a customer and how well we can align with the partners for the same reasons,” explains Jim Fisher, Vice President of Channels and Partners, APJ at Boomi.
A recent study by Boomi revealed that 86% of organizations have moved beyond the AI agent pilot stage, The study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Boomi also revealed that only 34% of organizations trust the actions their AI agents are taking.
The findings indicate that while AI is a game changer for organizations, there are still many areas the technology needs to improve, especially when it comes to gaining trust in organizations.
In the Asia Pacific region, research commissioned by Boomi and conducted by Omdia showed that despite APAC’s rapid AI adoption, a significant number of organizations lack the data architecture needed to achieve measurable return on investment (ROI). While nine in 10 believe AI-enabled automation will significantly reshape their business processes within two to three years, only 46% currently have a platform-led approach to integration, highlighting a widening gap between AI ambition and execution.
This is the area in which Boomi is hoping to make a difference to customers in the APAC region. At Boomi World 2026, the data activation company for AI unveiled major expansions of its Boomi Enterprise Platform, introducing new capabilities across orchestrated agentic workflows, agentic engineering, governed agent connectivity, grounded agent context, and localized agent infrastructure.
This includes Boomi Orchestrate to helps customers turn business ideas into enterprise-grade agentic workflows faster and Boomi Connect to provide secure, governed connectivity between AI tools (e.g. Claude, Copilot, Gemini) and enterprise applications through 1000+ managed, MCP-enabled tools.
While these innovations will enable organizations to build and deploy AI better, getting customers to use them is no easy task, especially in the APAC region. This is why the vendor relies heavily on its partner ecosystem in Asia to support customers in their AI journey, making sure they have the right tools in place, especially when it comes to data needed for their AI use cases.
In a conversation with CRN Asia, Jim Fisher, Vice President of Channels and Partners, APJ at Boomi, explained that Boomi is all about enabling integration for its customers. What this means is, the vendor makes sure the technology customers are investing in can be integrated seamlessly into their business process.
For example, Fisher explained that for a digital banking platform or a student portal or a citizen portal to work properly, integration is the absolute foundation of that.
“Boomi by ourselves, we don't build those solutions. We're not digital banking experts, it's partners every single time. So, what that enables us to do by working closer with partners, we get into bigger projects, and therefore we grow a lot quicker. The simple measure we use to express how well and how closely we're aligned with partners is the attach rate, the percentage of our business that is done with partners. When I joined Boomi just over three years ago, our attach rate was about 50%, which is good. It's now 95%. And for that simple reason that what integration does, it enables customer outcomes,” he said.
Given that customer outcomes are normally done by system integrators, partners are absolutely critical as its no longer just about selling to a market. For Fisher, the industry now is all about co-selling moving up the value stack with customers.
“Everything we do is with partners who transact, sometimes it's resale, sometimes it's with Boomi. We have a large number of SIs who love doing resale because they get annuity, and that's fantastic because then they invest more. And then you have a lot of partners, whether they're local partners or GSIs, who are more focused on the customer outcome. So, if they're doing a, $500,000 project for example, the Boomi component may be $100,000. So, they're more interested in the services piece,” he said.
Growth in APAC
When it comes to integration, Fisher said that it is a very horizontal process. Hence, when it comes to market opportunity in Asia, most of Boomi’s customers would be those that are looking for a market opportunity or are being challenged in the industry.
“So, if someone's under threat, there's a lot of disruption in the market. So, they have to transform quickly. They need to be agile and move quickly. They can't go on a five-or-10-year ERP journey. Now, why Asia is so fascinating is there's an enormous population base and the markets are growing incredibly quickly. Unlike traditional markets, the US or the UK or Australia where it's about how do we do marginally better? We've got the Asian economies just taking over everywhere. So, there's an opportunity for us everywhere. And it just depends on where the stress is in the business,” he said.
For Fisher, one of the key things that will determine how well and where Boomi grows in a country in the region is how well they align with the partners, because the partners are the ones doing the solution for the customer.
Looking at countries like Singapore, Malaysia and India, Fisher pointed out that the integration space or the space that Boomi plays in is the opportunity is unlimited.
“It's not like we're looking at a market share percentage. The opportunity is how well you can explain a value proposition to a customer and how well we can align with the partners for the same reasons. So where is this market? It's point-to-point coding, it's SI work, it's embedded solutions inside technology. So just by showing companies that there's a better way to integrate and a more efficient way that is going to lead to value add on subsequent projects is an enormous opportunity. But then with things like AI coming along, it goes to how do you propose a solution to a customer that they would not have done otherwise. So, it's not even market share, it's how well we can show that there's a better way. So, in general, in all of these markets, the upside is incredible,” he said.
Taking a deeper look into the opportunities in Malaysia, Fisher said that the country has got a huge manufacturing base, as well as a lot of plantation companies, all of which have enormous opportunities there.
“It's about how we are the best vendor at explaining the value in that market there. I spend a lot of time up here in Asia and in Malaysia. The opportunity is massive for us especially in the manufacturing sector. We have quite a number of customers in that space. Also, the mining sector and the plantation sector is absolutely enormous, of course,” he added.
Over in Australia, Fisher pointed out that while the market is big, the opportunities get small quickly as well.
The Australian market is very big. It's mature. But it gets small very quickly.
“At the moment, Australia is our biggest business, but we can make Asia big as well , because the economies are huge. In terms of the technology in Asia, because of the speed of innovation, people are just going to AI very fast,” he said.
The partner opportunity
Fisher explained that Boomi has invested heavily in its partner program, especially in enabling partners in the region. This includes having a senior partner leader in the ASEAN region helping partners.
“The Apex program we built for partners has three leaders in APAC. There is one in India, one in Australia and one in Singapore. That program has gone globally and worked incredibly well. It's an investment in partners so that they can grow their business with Boomi. And we experienced huge growth last year in Asia. It was the fastest growing region for us,” he said.
With enablement remaining the biggest hurdle for partners, Fisher pointed out the challenge is how can Boomi integrate its solutions into what partners are already doing.
“The challenge for us is not saying, here's this great technology, go and sell it, which is what a lot of software companies do and what Boomi did before. It's how we can be more productive in their business and how we can grow their business. So our philosophy in my team is, we focus on the partner and how we can grow the partner. And our belief is, and I think that's proved over a number of years, that will result in growth for Boomi,” he said.
“The challenge is not market share. It's about how do you provide a solution for the customer. And that's why this industry is so exciting. The growth potential is enormous, because the customers are already spending the money. Efficiently or inefficiently, it's how do we make sure that they understand the value that Boomi adds,” he added.
“And because we have a lever with the partners, because we're in the fastest growing territory in the world, Southeast Asia specifically, because of the population base, because of the way those economies are maturing incredibly quickly, the opportunity for us, even if we do, if there's a thousand things we could do, and we just do five of them, we'll be wildly successful,” Fisher said.
Fisher also mentioned that most partners just want to grow their business and all they really want is to understand how Boomi can add value to them.
“It's how we can help them grow. So that enablement focus that we've got is critically important, because otherwise, we're just another line item on their price book. They're already doing something. They might be an SAP partner, they might be an Oracle partner, or they might be Microsoft partner. But they have an existing business. It's how do we add value to that,” he said.
Fisher also highlighted that Boomi is always adding more partners but doing it a bit differently.
“We're like a lot of vendors. Over the years, there's been a lot of partners who signed up. So, we have a lot of partners. But because this is a value game, not a volume game, less is more. And the way I look at it, coming back to my statement of how does Boomi help the partner grow their business? If I have a market and pick any of the Southeast Asia countries, if we're a certain size, and I know we can get many multiples bigger, and we're a decent size in all of them. But if I put too many partners in there, no one makes any money. No one grows their business. Therefore, no one invests, no one. So, to us, less is more. We have focused partners and then unmanaged partners, where Boomi is not critical to their business. So, we still have all the enablement, and we have an automated marketing campaign for them. But we do focus on a handful,” he said.
Hopes for the region
With that said, Fisher believes that the rest of 2026 will be all about continuing the growth in Asia.
“We just want to continue the growth in Asia. We had an enormous year last year, but we're just starting. And we want to focus on being critical to our partners, helping them grow their business so that we're the vendor of choice,” he said.
Fisher added that it’s important to have continual improvement with partners. This includes having more enablement for partners.
“We have a really good partner program. We've added a lot of the enablement. It's making an enormous difference. The Apex program we've added and also added a marketing solution called the Campaign Creator. It's a web service where they can go in, and we have pre-built campaigns. They can customize them and execute them. And so, we add marginal things like that, which will help them be more successful,” Fisher concluded.