We want to make integration much,much easier – dare I say fun.  Today we took a big leap forward as Mule iON goes GA. Mule iON is the integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) that integrates  SaaS applications, cloud services, and social media platforms easily as well as on-premise applications. We believe it is time for a true integration platform dedicated to making real-time integration and orchestration quicker, and painless.

With so many integration options out there why is iON the right solution? There are some fundamental shifts happening in I.T.  (that I’ve blogged about before) that are changing the needs of what and how we integrate:

• The widespread adoption of SaaS applications means more of our data lives in ‘cloud silos’.
• The number of public APIs has been doubling year on year over the last 5 years, reaching 5,000+ this year.  That’s a lot of great data and services we want to use in our applications
• The explosions in smart devices and applications is creating more  needs to consume data from various applications which means those applications must be integrate-able (typically through an API).
• These trends are changing the traditional application architecture model where the old logic tier now becomes a service tier that different consumers can interact with and the data tier combines a database with any number of API calls to external applications. Application development is becoming composite in nature

A new platform is needed to address the integration challenges of the cloud. The platform needs to be cloud-based and cloud-centric, flexible and open enough to cope with simple and complex scenarios and needs to be simpler and more accessible to a wider audience than anything that came before.

Mule iON marks a major step forward providing a true cloud integration platform, that enables simple integration, orchestration and on more complex scenarios.

Overview

Mule Studio – Mule iON’s Eclipse-based flow designer, called Mule Studio, is a simple drag-and-drop tool that integrates with existing developer processes and tools, making it easy for developers to create new Mule iON apps. Access a rich library of transports and cloud connectors as well as integration functions, right from Mule Studio, and deploy your app with one click to the iON cloud.

 

Connectivity – Mule iON features a rich set of cloud connectors, making it easy to connect with the most common SaaS and cloud services such as Salesforce.com, NetSuite, Paypal, Intacct, AWS, Twitter, Facebook and 50 more. An easy-to-use development kit makes it simple to create your own cloud connectors as well, without knowing anything about the underlying integration infrastructure.

 

Secure Data Gateway – For applications that require integration with on-premise applications, Mule iON includes a secure data gateway that enables you to access behind-the-firewall data sources without compromising security or data integrity. Connector  over 100 transports, protocols, and application connectors, such as JMS, JDBC, FTP, SOAP and REST Web Services, IBM WebSphere MQ, SAP, and Oracle EBS.

 

Management portal - Mule iON includes a browser-based management portal that gives you access to usage metrics, monitoring and control. Also manage your account, billing and service plans.

 

Multi-tenant, Elastic – After designing your integration app, it’s just one click to deploy it to Mule iON’s multi-tenant integration runtime. This runtime is based on the proven and robust Mule, the world’s most widely open source integration platform. More than 2,500 organizations are using Mule in mission-critical production environments.The multi-tenant runtime means that your data is fully isolated and secure, and it is fully managed by MuleSoft. This means that you are always running on the most stable and integrated version of the platform.

Use cases

Since the notion of an integration Platform as a Service is pretty new the best way to describe it is through how it is used.  There are four main use cases that we see our current users and early customers using:

• SaaS to SaaS integration - Synchronise data between SaaS applications like CRM and marketing automation and accounting, synchronise calendars or  performing real-time updates.
• SaaS to On-Premise Integration – Back up SaaS data to a database behind a firewall or update applications like SAP or Oracle EBS when events occur in SaaS applications like Salesforce.com.
• API Enablement - create a REST API to enable customers or partners to interact with your application or on-premise data. Publish integrations through REST APIs that are consumed by Mobile and web applications.
• Social Enterprise - create activity Streams using Yammer or Chatter from applications that don’t typically publish information. This surfaces activity from invisible systems such as ERP or fulfilment.

Try it

Mule iON is available to everyone, and new accounts are free for 6 months. You can sign up here or if you are already a Mule community member you can log in here.  We’d love to hear you feedback either directly or through the community.  Let us know how we can improve.

Go forth and integrate!

Follow: @rossmason, @mulejockey, @muleionstatus

Related posts:

1. Introducing integration PaaS (iPaaS)
2. Announcing Mule iON, the industry’s first integration PaaS
3. Integration is the biggest challenge in the cloud
4. Mule iON: Integrating SaaS Applications with On-premise Data using the Secure Data Gateway

Filed under: Mule iON | Social tagging: EBS > ga > Mule > Mule iON > Salesforce.com > SAP