PhillyDeals: Dell's merger with Boomi results in a win-win for area workers

When computer magnate Michael Dell closed the deal to buy upper Main Line business-software maker Boomi last year, boss Robert Moul said he was hopeful this merger would create jobs at his firm, not kill them.

"Some folks were skeptical," Moul recalls. "We're already expanding and taking on more projects within Dell. We'll be doubling staff size, adding some 30 heads here in Berwyn, and expanding office space."

Dell Boomi met applicants Tuesday at the Dolce Hotel in King of Prussia to fill posts such as Application Integration Specialist and Cloud Operations Architect. The "cloud" is the shifting space on global computer networks, which stores software programs more cheaply than old-fashioned servers. Boomi writes applications that link old business-software systems, through the cloud, to smartphones and other new devices.

Mergers don't always work like this for small firms acquired by national giants. Oracle shut AdminServer's Chester headquarters, which was supposed to house hundreds of future workers, after the business-software giant bought the fast-growing insurance-software maker two years ago. The work moved to other Oracle offices.

But Google Inc. has made good on its promise to open its first Philadelphia office, moving the engineering group it acquired when it bought Penn-founded Invite Media last year, from dive offices over the shuttered Copa Miami bar on Chestnut Street, to Class A offices on Market Street.

Moul used to run SCT, the college-software firm, but left after selling out to SunGard seven years ago. Why'd he stay at Boomi? Dell "valued what we had, and they've kept us together," he told me. "They said, 'We want to learn from you.'

"Master brands - the IBMs, HPs [Hewlett-Packard], Dells - realize they don't have this expertise."

Boomi founder Rick Nucci is also staying, leading programmers to write apps for clients from "small mom-and-pop shops to big companies like Kodak, Siemens, JPMorgan, Penske truck-leasing, and Open Table" restaurant reservations, Nucci says.

Don't big firms squash entrepreneurs' independence? "Funding, capital strategies, all that worry immediately went away," Moul said. "We're able to do things on a bigger scale. Now it's about how quickly we can grow."