Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

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.

The merged Dell Boomi , under the leadership of Michael Dell, is planning to grow in Berwyn, adding office space and 30 people.
The merged Dell Boomi , under the leadership of Michael Dell, is planning to grow in Berwyn, adding office space and 30 people.Read moreTONY AVELAR / Bloomberg News

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."

Why stay out in Berwyn instead of moving to Center City? "Our [workers'] demographic is in the late 20s to mid-30s. We had a lot of babies here in the last few years," Moul says, and that means a suburban address.

He saw it coming

When

Merrill Lynch

, then-

Citigroup

-owned

Smith Barney

and

Morgan Stanley

tottered in the 2008 financial crisis, regional brokerages such as Philadelphia's

Janney Montgomery Scott

and St. Petersburg, Fla.-based

Raymond James

saw opportunity.

"We staffed up," Thomas James, boss since 1970 of the firm named for his dad, told me on a swing through Philadelphia last week. We talked between a client reception at the Art Museum's Marc Chagall exhibit, and a lecture James was to give at Wharton.

"For five years up to 2007 we knew [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] had problems," he said. As head of the Financial Services Roundtable, a bank and brokerage lobby, James says he joined JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon and ex-Wells Fargo boss Dick Kovacevich pressuring Treasury and the Fed to rein in irresponsible Fannie financing and Wall Street trading in high-risk loans at low-risk prices. But Fannie and Freddie had "very strong lobbies."

So James' bank affiliate dumped its weakest loans, and braced. When Bear Stearns and Lehman Bros. collapsed, James hired a total of 1,200 staff and affiliate brokers, boosting its total to 5,000. And it was still strong enough to turn down TARP bailout funds.

Two years later, Raymond James shares have been trading at record highs, while industry leader Morgan Stanley and other giant brokers struggle.

Last time the market jammed, in the 1970s, James' firm was so poor, the family almost sold a controlling stake to Philadelphia Stock Exchange short-seller Barry Tague, whose bearish advice helped save James' stock portfolio. But Tague backed out at the last minute, or the firm would have been Tague James, and maybe based up here, James told me, laughing.

In 1998, James finally opened a permanent Philadelphia presence, hiring Wheat First Butcher Singer veteran Thomas Walrond Jr. (who still heads the Philadelphia region) and more.

James says he's bullish: "The private sector is strong. It has squeezed the lemon hard to get profit out," and now it is time companies start hiring again. James is not even scared of $100 oil, thanks to Pennsylvania's cheap natural gas.

James says American business is usually too busy to study history, but now is the time: "Learn, and remember."