Cloud App Integration .com

Mule iON designed to let users and service providers create custom integration applications

MuleSoft today announced the public beta release of Mule iON, an integration platform as a service (iPaaS). Mule iON is designed to facilitate cloud application integration by providing a framework on which developers can create custom integrations and and integration services. We recently spoke with Ali Sadat, VP of Mule iON, and Mahau Ma, VP of marketing at MuleSoft, about the release.

“Part of the problem of integrating cloud applications is the domain expertise around the applications themselves,” said Sadat. “No one integration vendor is going to know all the apps, all the variances, all the business processes.”

Mahau explained how that problem led MuleSoft to create Mule iON. “What we wanted to do is create the right platform for domain experts, so people who understand the specific demand can create an offer for specific solutions on top of the platform,” said Ma.

Sadat explained how an iPaaS such as Mule iON will allow service providers to capitalize on their domain expertise. “Someone that knows the [telecommunications] industry really well can create integrations in that vertical and offer them as a service,” said Sadat. “You may be using Salesforce as your SaaS CRM, but you have back-end systems you need to integrate with. That’s where we see service providers saying, ‘We know these back-end systems. We’re going to build these integrations, offer them as a service, but the customer can configure them as necessary.’”

Mule iON iPaaS to help systems integrators monetize their knowledge

Sadat said that such a model can give service providers a new means of monetization. “One of the challenges we’re seeing in the cloud is that systems integrators have had their implementation times go down. A customer can connect to Salesforce or Netsuite and be up within a few days,” said Sadat. “Some of these cloud systems integrators are service-enabling their IP if you will, putting it out there for people to sign-up so they can start making royalties on their knowledge.”

MuleSoft will create some of the generic integration services themselves, but Sadat hopes that the Mule iON iPaaS will foster the creation of a marketplace, similar to an app store for the cell phone industry. “With smartphones, there’s a whole market that’s being generated where you can create an application and put it out there. The same thing is happening in the cloud world,” said Sadat.

In a blog post about the release MuleSoft CTO Ross Mason detailed some of the products technical specifications. Accord to Mason Mule iON uses an Eclipse graphical environment (With support for Maven and command line coding) that allows for the development of REST APIs, integration applications, and Web services. It is built on the Mule integration platform.