The Strategic Importance of an Enterprise Integration Platform

1. The rapid adoption of the cloud has dramatically reduced the barriers to entry for both local and global markets, as access to IT capacity is now inexpensive and massively scalable.
2. The global adoption of mobile broadband, combined with social media and ubiquitous messaging has redefined customer, reach, engagement, distribution and customer service.
3. The integration of connected endpoints with highly scalable compute resources promises to streamline a multitude of industrial and consumer processes.
4. Capital, particularly in developing markets, is readily available as investors reward innovation and growth.
5. Globalization requires companies to both innovate with new products to achieve and become low-cost operators to sustain market position.

In order to compete and win in a global, hyper-competitive, fast-moving world with increasing customer demands, all kinds of technology must be harnessed to meet these trends. APIs, IoT, big data, and mobile strategies all become increasingly important to fend off business disruption, compete against new market entrants, create new revenue streams, and meet customer demands. But without an enterprise integration platform, not only will all these technologies exist in silos, but they won’t be able to be useful to the business.

The key to unlocking the value of these technologies remains the ability to not only collect and interpret intelligent streams of data, but also to assemble components to quickly create new sets of capabilities. To make this happen, businesses have to have integration. Not just the integration of hardware, applications and data, but the integration of ideas, internal teams, external partners, and new business processes as well.

Bill Briggs, the CTO of Deloitte, notes that enterprise integration is the most strategic discipline you can have as a company. He points out that “your organization won't be able to compete the way it needs to without having integration as a core discipline and the ability to think about projects as business services and broader APIs. Not just as a way to enable execution, but how do you think about your core services in IP as new products and offerings and business models?”

In the modern world, everything is digital and everything can connect. But connectivity is no longer about just integrating back office systems. The modern business needs to find ways to unlock the value of your data and assets. Technology assets exist everywhere - in files, databases, applications, warehouses, big data stores in the cloud and on premises. An enterprise integration platform will allow you to connect those assets to your customers, partners, and employees.

It is imperative to act now on the opportunities provided by digital transformation. Many companies - Uber, Amazon, Airbnb - are becoming increasingly competitive based on how well they integrate with other systems. Customers now can easily identify and switch to companies that better meet their needs. The secret for success in today’s economy is the ability to bring multiple technologies together to create distinctive, differentiated offerings.             

It’s becoming increasingly clear that enterprise integration is a strategic business decision, but many organizations are not thinking about it this way. Some organizations are allowing lines of business to develop their own applications or services without thinking about how those applications will connect to underlying ERP systems, or it is considered with a short-term approach, which values the success of an individual project over the enterprise as a whole.

MuleSoft’s approach to enterprise integration aims to provide the most flexible approach to integration that will allow organizations to connect applications, data and devices on-premises or in the cloud. Anypoint Platform intends to solve challenging integration problems across SOA, SaaS and APIs, in a lightweight, developer-friendly way. Our approach to integration will offer the speed and agility necessary to succeed in the digital era.

Take a look at more information about Anypoint Platform, MuleSoft’s unified, flexible enterprise integration platform, and find out how you can transform your business.