What Is Mulesoft? Features, Certifications, & Integration With Salesforce

In current times, we have seamless connectivity with all the applications that we use. With all these high-functioning technologies, software, and devices, we can manage and deliver everything with just a few clicks on our screens.

While on the one hand, all the connections were establishing and pushing us close to ease, its process was exhausting and quite expensive for the industries. Mulesoft has revolutionized data management by providing an innovative, efficient, and cost-effective solution for accessing data across multiple applications.

Acquired by Salesforce in May 2018, Mulesoft supports well-established organizations by integrating new technologies with just plug-and-play. Mulesoft streamlines integration with its innovative middleware-iPaaS solution and a vast selection of built-in connectors and modules.

If you are also seeking everything related to Mulesoft, this is the right place to end your search. We will be discussing a complete overview of Mulesoft technology, its features, the possible benefits you can avail of by using Mulesoft architecture, and more. In current times, we have seamless connectivity with all the applications that we use. With all these high-functioning technologies, software, and devices, we can manage and deliver everything with just a few clicks on our screens.

What Is Mulesoft?

Mulesoft is a well-known integration platform that collaborates SaaS applications with enterprises. It unifies data for delivering a single view of the customers, builds connected experiences, and automates business processes.

Mulesoft technology is a Java-based platform, or it is a Java-based Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) that supports businesses in communicating with a variety of platforms.

Mulesoft offers a secure environment for organizations by utilizing existing components and enhancing productivity through the reuse of elements, without requiring any modifications.
The good thing about Mulesoft is that whatever integration you are doing, you can go from less to more. For example, you can start integrating a few applications and then keep connecting more with time.

What Is An API?

API is an acronym for Application Programming Interface. It is a code that builds an access point to an application or system, enabling a secure connection for communication between two applications.

Whenever you use an application on your mobile device, the application first connects with the internet and then sends all the app data to the server. Later, the server retires to interpret and take the required actions on the application data.

Mulesoft provides a wide range of pre-defined APIs for all systems and applications. When you pre-add, the API to your legacy system gives you a modern way of connecting with the system, unaware of its functionality. In all cloud systems, you can locate an intermediate API which is generally known as System API. The System API is used to understand modern system languages and facilitate the exchange of data. All the APIs in Mulesoft are networked and function differently.

The more complicated API does the extracted data processing. Interactive APIs process all the data you want to display on different multimedia platforms such as mobile phones, applications, desktops, etc. when you execute some logic. In addition, it also presents the development and execution of the API in your system.

When you adopt a modern API-based approach for every integration, it turns into a reusable building block. This process untangles the reusable process, allowing businesses to adopt IT quickly, establish organizational agility, and drive more innovation to scalability. It’s not just in the books; the organizations highlight the results. According to the report, Mulesoft customers earned a 445% return on investment in three years and maintained APIs and integrations, eventually saving 90% of the development time.

Lastly, it sends it back to your device, interprets the application data, and provides you with all the information you have asked for in a readable format. It’s all API, and everything that happens is all because of API.

What is MuleSoft used for?

There are multiple tools available for salesforce integration to integrate business systems with different technologies and CRM Platforms. Let’s discuss what Mulesoft does differently as an industry-ruling integration platform and API network for your business:

1. Connect Systems And Applications

The majority of the time, employees are grueling in switching between systems to pull and process information, known as Swivel chair work.

Mulesoft eliminates this swivel chair system by integrating several systems or applications and making them work as one system. When you build APIs, you get permission to share and display all the data in a clear view to your employees. Another good thing is these APIS are reusable, providing an additional advantage for identifying future connections and consequently helping your business to scale and grow.

2. Business Processes Automation

Besides integrating or connecting business applications, Mulesoft automates the business process, which is part of the systems. It decreases wasted employee time and eliminates the risks that barge in with manual entry and data review by enabling end-to-end automated processes.

A Mulesoft implementation helps businesses by automating their processes and working as a middle-man that connects systems and transmits data via APIs.

3. Provide An Unified View Of Customers

Lack of visibility and insights into the customer journey can be a significant hurdle with disconnected systems. Once you integrate your systems with the help of Mulesoft, you can quickly ditch the guessing game of how you can enhance the quality of customer experience that you are delivering and let your business data stand out in the competition.

Mulesoft technology enables you to retrieve real-time data of customers and guides you in understanding their behavior and requirements in a better way. And when you get detailed insight, you will be able to provide them with an excellent personalized experience by presenting better offers, products, and customer services.

Features Of Mulesoft

MuleSoft’s main aim is to provide an integration platform to help businesses connect applications with other technologies through simple plug-and-play. Now let’s take a quick look at the features of MuleSoft:

1. Fast-Track Delivery Of Results

As easy to implement and utilize, Mulesoft delivers fast-track results. Mulesoft comes with in-built assets and connectors that enable faster integrations for your projects. API development is also paced up several times because of the existing accelerators within the platforms. These reusable APIs help your system establish a strong base, ultimately supporting your business in developing future projects faster and more efficiently.

2. Tough As Nails Operations

As soon as you get speed, security, and efficiency, the next thing you will look for is reliability in the platform that can easily handle and manage all your data. We all agree that resiliency is the key. You will then require a resilient infrastructure so that your clients and customers can always look up to you in terms of stability and reliability.

This Mulesoft technology is there to make sure that you make excellent business moves counting in the runtime performances and topology graphs. You will always have the current status of your business at hand, and this way, you won’t be just hanging in the guesswork of moving forward.

This operation works a charm in offering hands-on solutions for the problems prevailing in your organization while simultaneously maintaining resiliency. Apart from all this, Mulesoft offers an unbeatable scalability option that other platforms fail to do so.

3. Impermeable Security

With its Anypoint platform, Mulesoft runs coherently, taking care of all the security and governance parameters at all stages of an API’s lifecycle. Mulesoft strictly abides by the logging requirements and standard security measures by automatically applying the prescribed set of security and policies throughout all APIs.

API owners can work on concepts, develop, and constantly implement fast APIs. Security is one of the prime concerns when you work on the web and transmit data across different applications, devices, platforms, and systems.

4. Multiple Deployment & Monitoring Options

Mulesoft offers multiple deployment options to its users such as Customer Hosted (On-Premises), CloudHub, Hybrid, and Runtime Fabric Manager (Kubernetes based). Users can deploy applications available on Mulesoft in 12 different AWS regions. Mulesoft Anypoint provides monitoring of APIs and extracts real-time insights and metrics.

How Does Mulesoft Work?

Mulesoft provides a wide range of pre-defined APIs for all systems and applications. When you pre-add, the API to your legacy system gives you a modern way of connecting with the system, unaware of its functionality. In all cloud systems, you can locate an intermediate API which is generally known as System API. The System API is used to understand modern system languages and facilitate the exchange of data. All the APIs in Mulesoft are networked and function differently.

The more complicated API does the extracted data processing. Interactive APIs process all the data you want to display on different multimedia platforms such as mobile phones, applications, desktops, etc. when you execute some logic. In addition, it also presents the development and execution of the API in your system.

When you adopt a modern API-based approach for every integration, it turns into a reusable building block. This process untangles the reusable process, allowing businesses to adopt IT quickly, establish organizational agility, and drive more innovation to the scalability. It’s not just in the books; the organizations highlight the results. According to the report, Mulesoft customers earned a 445% return on investment in three years and maintained APIs and integrations, eventually saving 90% of the development time.

Components Of Mulesoft

We all know that Mulesoft is the best solution for integrating many applications that provide real-time updates. Now, let’s discuss its components in detail:

1. Anypoint Design Center

It provides a syntax-based web ecosystem that designs and documents APIs and various development instruments. With this construction of connectors, presentation of integration flows, and designing of APIs get easy. The Design Center permits:

• Connecting with any framework
• Faster API Designing.
• Data Mapping
• Real-time collaborative prototyping
• Testing and deployment of applications
• Easy integration

2. Anypoint Management Center

It is a web interface that handles SLAs, API clients, integration flows, traffic on the platform, etc. It offers robust control and visibility of employed applications and APIs. Its features are:

• Proactive performance monitoring
• Organizing and mapping of APIs and dependencies
• Rapid troubleshooting
• Personalized monitoring
• High scalability and availability

3. Anypoint Exchange

It acts as a collaborative hub that searches and utilizes the open and private pre-built reusable resources. Ultimately, it is a library for all the API providers that lets users share assets, templates, and APIs.

4. Mule Runtime Engine

It amalgamates robust data integration capabilities with real-time application integration or orchestration. Mule Runtime Engine is the only accessible runtime that merges data integration and application with different SaaS applications, APIs, and legacy systems. Features of Mule runtime covers:

• Transforming and mapping any sort of data and format
• Automatically stream and manage data
• Extend the strengths of Mule anywhere
• Incredibly scalable and extensible architecture
• Flexible and readily accessible performance

5. Anypoint Connectors

These connectors propose a lot of tools and ready-made resources for quicker connectivity. You can easily connect with the pre-configured connectors and your desired terminal with Anypoint connectors. Users can also draft their own reusable connector using Anypoint Connector DevKit software.

6. Mule Runtime Services

It is a suite of platform services that proffers scalability, reliability, high accessibility, and enterprise-level security. All its Runtime Manager, Runtime Engine, and Runtime Fabric platforms are synchronized to manage, connect, monitor, and employ APIs and applications.

MuleSoft Certification

As companies ramp up the digital transformation game, specialists who can handle the tasks well will grow in demand. If you think you or your company can benefit from MuleSoft, you can take online certification courses. Here’s everything you need to know:

Salesforce Mulesoft Integration

Just picture Salesforce integration with Mulesoft. What a dynamic combination it will be when CRM software gets the added advantage of API support and accurate data collection from all the applications. However, only a reliable Salesforce integration solutions provider can seamlessly integrate Salesforce with Mulesoft.

Here is the Step-by-Step Guide for the Salesforce Mulesoft Integration:

1. Create a new project in Mulesoft (File->New->Mule Project), name your project, and click Finish.

2. Now, you have to create an account on developers.salesforce.com. Sign in with your credentials, then on the top right corner of the home page, go to My Settings.

3. Next, select “Reset My Security Token” under the Personal Tab to get a security token on your registered email address.

4. In Anypoint Studio, you must drag the HTTP component to configure the connector. Then, select the host to enter the port number and click OK.

5. From Mule Palette, drag the Salesforce connector and add a connector configuration. Select Salesforce: Basic Authentication.

6. Enter the details required and click on Validate Configuration. Now it will let you check if the test connection established was successful or not.

7. Select the “Query” operation. Next, you must set the Language as “DataSense Query Language” and click on Query Builder. Now, select Accounts Object and all the required columns. Click on OK. Your query will be generated automatically; refer to this image:

8. The output of the query operation performed is a consumerIterator object in Salesforce. To view that output in a readable format (like JSON), you can use the object to JSON transformer.

9. Next, you have to save your project. In the Project Explorer, right-click on the Project folder->Run As-> Mule Application.

10. Finally, in the console, you will find the application status as “DEPLOYED.” Now hit the endpoint (http://localhost:8081) on your browser. All the fields that you have selected are visible in the Account Object.

Real-world applications of Salesforce Mulesoft Integration

Case: Increasing eCommerce Agility with Mulesoft

In this case, the e-commerce business is of fashion and lifestyle products in Europe. They offer a smooth and enjoyable shopping experience to shoppers with a wide range of brands and products on their portal. They bring the best of fashion to shoppers with the latest and trendiest products in the region. Their value proposition is to empower consumers to buy fashion and lifestyle products online with ease.

Challenges Faced

1. The problem lies in the traditional eCommerce platform – They needed a better eCommerce platform and integrations to support their global growth. They chose Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC) and MuleSoft Anypoint Platform to connect systems across brands, regions, and channels.
2. Difficulty in setting up SFCC – They expected us to build APIs to connect the SFCC with their complex and diverse back-end and front-end systems, such as Warehouse Management, CRM, ERP, loyalty, POS, payment providers, and so on.
3. Threat to the security of sensitive information – They had to overcome the formidable challenge of implementing the highest security standards, with high efficiency and monitoring, which would safeguard their company’s future in any scenario.

Solution Offered

1. Developed Mulesoft architecture – We designed a reference architecture using MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform. It created a 3-layered architectural model that followed MuleSoft’s best practices. This 3-layer architecture enabled the client to swap any downstream systems without affecting the integration.
2. Developed APIs for integration with SFCC – Built APLs to connect the new eCommerce platform with various data sources. We transformed legacy data to be used by the eCommerce platform and other systems. We developed all APl-enabled connections for reusability.
3. Implemented best security practices – Using Mulesoft Anypoint Security, we provided advanced defense for their APLs and integrations. It helped protect sensitive data, stop threats at the edge, and automatically enforce best security practices to protect and govern their platform.

Result

1. The speed of development increased.
2. Productivity increased
3. Customer satisfaction increased.
4. Innovation speed increased.

When businesses increase the speed of development, productivity, customer satisfaction, and innovation speed, they can achieve several benefits.

Increased revenue –  By developing and releasing new products and services faster, businesses can capture a larger share of the market and generate more revenue.

Improved customer experience – By delivering products and services more quickly, businesses can improve the customer experience and increase customer loyalty.

Reduced costs – By streamlining development processes and reducing the time to market, businesses can save money on development costs.

Enhanced competitive advantage – By being faster to market and more innovative, businesses can gain a competitive advantage over their rivals.

Stats Showing the Performance of Businesses: Before and After Mulesoft

Before Mulesoft:

Problems that the companies were facing without MuleSoft:

The Home Depot: In 2017, The Home Depot experienced a major outage that affected its online and in-store sales. The outage was caused by a problem with the company’s integration between its legacy systems and its new e-commerce platform.

British Airways: In 2017, British Airways experienced a major IT outage that caused widespread flight cancellations and delays. The outage was caused by a problem with the company’s integration between its booking and flight operations systems.

After Mulesoft

According to InfoClutch, Mulesoft already holds a customer base of 1,600 companies across various industries like healthcare, manufacturing, retail, media and entertainment, eCommerce, financial services, etc.

MuleSoft has been used by some of the world’s biggest and most innovative companies to solve their complex integration challenges. From GEICO, Wells Fargom Sanitas, Bahwan CyberTek, and Deakin University to the University of South Florida, they all use MuleSoft to deliver innovative solutions that have improved their businesses.

Industries-wise distribution of Mulesoft customers:

• Financial Services 27%
• Retail 20%
• Healthcare 15%
• Technology 12%
• Manufacturing 8%
• Media and Entertainment 6%
• Other 2%

Wrapping Up!

As companies continue to ride the IT 4 wave, there’s a much-needed all-rounder solution like MuleSoft to help keep things connected, integrated, and organized at an organic level. It may seem like a winning formula to avoid the eye of the hurricane that transformations bring; there’s no doubt that Mulesoft is rapidly becoming the game changer in IoT innovation.

For further discussion and queries, get in touch with our experts today.