A New Era of Lobster: We Proudly Present Data Platform 25.0.

At Lobster, our vision is to connect people and data, empowering businesses to turn information into a competitive advantage. With this release, we bring together our core products – Lobster _data and Lobster _pro – into a single, unified platform – the Lobster Data Platform 25.0.By combining integration and orchestration capabilities, we provide a seamless experience that simplifies complex workflows, enhances automation, and lays the foundation for future innovations.

Combining Integration & Orchestration.

Data Apps: Smart Orchestration for Human-in-the-Loop Processes.

Some integration challenges require human intervention – whether for validating data, handling exceptions, creating transparency for informed decision making, or manually inputting information.

With the combined capabilities of our Data Platform, you can create Data Apps: small pieces of functionality that streamline tasks that require human involvement for certain steps. By providing these functionalities, the platform simplifies tasks that need human oversight while maintaining the efficiency of automated integration flows.

This allows for human participation in the data integration process, making our vision of Connecting People and Data come to life.

Lobster Data Storage: Simplified Data Sharing.

Sometimes integrating data flows is not enough, and you need to store data for visualisation or interaction.

As part of our orchestration capabilities, you can store data on our Data Platform, allowing users to keep data accessible for visualisation, collaboration, and external sharing via APIs or custom interfaces.

Prebuilt Templates: Faster Time-to-Value.

Getting started with a new capability can be challenging. To accelerate adoption, we’ve introduced ready-to-use templates for building Data Apps, covering common scenarios like Web EDI, file validation, and EDI onboarding.

These templates will streamline the development process and help you unlock the full potential of Data Apps from the start.

Expanding Data Integration & Processing.

Lobster Bridge: Secure Hybrid Connectivity.

Many organisations operate in hybrid environments, with both cloud and on-premises systems. While cloud technologies offer significant advantages, certain systems remain on-prem due to security or compliance requirements, creating a need for seamless and secure integration between these environments.

Lobster Bridge ensures secure, VPN-free connectivity between these environments, enabling seamless data exchange without exposing sensitive systems to external risks.

Industrial-Grade Connectivity for Manufacturing.

In the manufacturing industry, gathering data from production processes is key to ensure quality and transparency. If something goes wrong during the production process, you need to have this data to act on it.Our platform now supports key industrial protocols, helping businesses integrate data from machines, sensors, and enterprise systems, moving you into the era of Industry 4.0. The following standards are now supported by default:

• MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport):A light-weight messaging protocol for networking a large number of devices with limited resources.
• OPC UA (OPC Unified Architecture):A communication architecture for secure data interchange when automating industrial processes.
• TCP (Transmission Control Protocol):A protocol for connecting devices that are not based on common industrial protocols.
• ENGDAT/ENGPART:Automated CAD data exchange V2 and V3.

Enhanced Protocol Support.

We’ve expanded the range of supported integration protocols, ensuring broader compatibility with enterprise ecosystems. The following protocols are now default capabilities of our platform:

• AS2: Communication in accordance with RFC 4130
• AS4: A data exchange protocol based on the ebMS 3.0 specification in accordance with the OASIS standard
• OFTP: Odette File Transfer Protocol via TCP/IP
• X.400: Message transfer protocol over TCP/IP and TLS

Updated ETL With Parquet Support.

Our customers are handling ever increasing amounts of data. To support this, we have expanded our ETL/ELT capabilities, which are now also able to work with Parquet files (a modern and high-performance file format).

Working with Parquet files enables faster data processing and reduced storage requirements when working with large datasets, improving ETL performance. With ETL as a core capability of our platform, we enable you to move large volumes of data from operational systems into a data lake without the need to invest in another platform or learn another technology.

AI-Driven Documentation for Function Chains.

Complex function chains can become difficult to manage over time, making collaboration and maintenance challenging.

AI-powered documentation generation now simplifies collaboration by providing automatically generated, easy-to-read, and up-to-date insights into function chain structures and functionality. This enhances maintainability and reduces the effort required to manage and update function chains, ensuring long-term efficiency and scalability.

Platform-Wide Enhancements.

Unified Authentication & Access Control.

Historically, Lobster _data and Lobster _pro had separate user accounts. We have now centralised user management within the Data Platform, simplifying account creation, role management, and security policies across all platform capabilities.

This unified approach eliminates the need for separate user accounts for different functionalities, providing a more streamlined and efficient experience for administrators and users alike.

New features include more advanced password policies, role management, brute force protection, and master data connected to users.

Single Sign-On Improvements.

We have expanded the security options to simplify the implementation of customer-specific security requirements. These enhancements include improved support for SAML and OAuth2, providing greater flexibility and compliance with modern security standards, aligning with organisational security policies.

We now support multiple SSO providers such as: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Auth0 and FrontEgg, which can be used at the same time.

Two-Factor Authentication.

To enhance account protection, we are introducing two-factor authentication (2FA). This provides an extra layer of security for accounts, reducing the risk of unauthorised access while maintaining a seamless login experience. We support Time-Based One Time passwords and e-mail tokens.

Custom Theming for a Branded Experience.

Your platform should reflect your brand so that every touchpoint – whether it’s an internal dashboard or an external Data App – feels like your organisation. That’s why we are introducing custom theming options to allow you to tailor the look and feel of the Data Platform and the Data Apps created with it.

This includes the customisation of logos, colors, and other visual elements, ensuring a consistent brand experience, for both internal and external users.

Empowering Users With Community & Digital Experiences.

Roadmap Portal: Transparency & Collaboration.

We believe in open innovation. Our new Roadmap Portal offers insight into the features which are under consideration for development – these are the features we are actively researching and which we might implement in the future. The portal also shows the features which are planned for the next release – these are the features we are currently developing, and which are expected to be released in the upcoming version.

Furthermore, the portal provides you with the opportunity to upvote features and submit new ideas, thereby influencing roadmap development.

Predictable Release Cadence.

We want to provide you with a continuous flow of value, balancing innovation with stability when we release new versions of our Data Platform. By committing to a regular cadence, we ensure the delivery of incremental improvements, keeping our product up to date and aligned with evolving customer needs and industry standards. Our release cadence consists of:

• New version every quarter, containing new features, improvements, and bug fixes.
• Patch releases when needed, containing critical bug fixes, security vulnerabilities fixes, or performance improvements without introducing new features.
• One Long-Term Supported (LTS) release per year.

This approach allows businesses to plan upgrades with confidence, ensuring minimal disruption while staying at the forefront of technology.

Learning Management System.

To empower users, we are launching a Learning Management System (LMS) featuring:

• Self-service digital courses to help users get started
• Instructor-led training, both online and on-site
• An updated certification program to validate expertise and fuel professional growth

Lobster Marketplace.

Discover everything the Lobster Data World has to offer through our new Marketplace. From technical assets like connectors and templates to training packages and cloud resources, the Marketplace makes it easy to find the tools and knowledge you need to maximise your Lobster experience.

The Future of Integration Starts Now.

The Lobster Data Platform represents the next step in the evolution of seamless, intelligent data integration.

With enhanced automation, security options, and usability, we are enabling businesses to move faster, work smarter, and unlock new value from their data.

Frequently asked questions. Quickly answered.