23 Sep We have an API, why do we need Mulesoft?
In today’s world, every person and every business has data in more than one system. Sometimes those systems communicate effectively and seamlessly. Sometimes they don’t.
But what is an API (Application Programming Interface) and how does that come into play? What is an integration platform and how is that different? How do you right-size your software investment to ensure your employees and customers have the data they need, when they need it, to effectively energize your business?
APIs: The Building Blocks of Integration
Let’s imagine your data as physical products or objects living in a physical space, we’ll call it your “data warehouse”. Your warehouse has walls and a ceiling, locks, and security procedures all protecting your data.
The API in your data warehouse is the doors and delivery bays that provide access to your data, along with the security parameters, keycards, delivery managers, and front-desk workers who determine that the appropriate person is taking the appropriate type and amount of data at the appropriate time.
In this analogy, as in the majority of APIs, your warehouse isn’t a delivery company. Your warehouse relies on delivery providers to travel to your warehouse with the appropriate credentials in order to release any products. In this model, your API ends when the products are released from the warehouse.
Just like in our analogy, APIs are reliant on some system to move the actual product from one warehouse to another, or from a warehouse to a consumer. This is where an integration platform comes in.
iPaaS: The Integration Delivery Company
An iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service) or application acts just like a delivery company. Its job is to follow the approved security procedures, take just the right amounts of data (products) at just the right times, and move them to another location. At the new location (another API) this delivery must also follow the appropriate cadence, volume, and security procedures.
Offprem Technology stands by Mulesoft, Salesforce’s iPaaS offering, as one of the most robust, flexible, scalable options on the market. Mulesoft’s job is to safely and securely transmit your data from system to system. Mulesoft makes sure your data is transferred in the appropriate formats or transformed and re-mapped to the system that needs to ingest it.
Without Mulesoft your products are stuck in your warehouse, unable to flow from place to place.
Why an iPaaS?
Not only can an iPaaS pick up data from your warehouse and transmit it to another warehouse, it can return new data back to your warehouse. It can go to a third warehouse and get a totally new kind of data. It can ask your warehouse if any new data has been created that it might need to deliver.
Just like an international delivery company, an iPaaS can get data from numerous locations, synthesize and de-duplicate it, and transmit it cleanly into a new location, right when and where you need it.
How is Mulesoft or another iPaaS different from a Salesforce AppExchange package?
Truly, any software package that transfers data, including an AppExchange installed one, is an integration. An existing integration package that connects your systems “natively” really just runs a set of code that interacts between APIs.
If there is a managed package integration option between two systems, that might be a great fit for your use case. The limitations of those integrations might be in the types of data that are available, the frequency of data transfer, or the cost of the package.
Is there anything an iPaaS can’t do?
Sometimes, yes.
Some things in the warehouse may not be available for delivery, i.e. a data warehouse might not expose certain data in it’s API. For example, an API might not have a method for accessing data about when a record was last modified, or it may not allow accessing certain sensitive data like social security numbers. If the API doesn’t allow the data to be accessed, your iPaaS won’t be able to transfer it.
Sometimes an API has limits on the frequency with which data may be transferred, or the volume of data that may be transmitted. Often these limits are negotiable (e.g. you might pay for a higher tier of data access). Some APIs allow your integration to ask things like “have any records been modified in the past 5 minutes” allowing your iPaaS to only query for records that have changed (speeding up and reducing cost of delivery).
Many times the iPaaS may have to query multiple endpoints (think of these like multiple delivery truck bays) in order to get the specific data needed. Other times, data might be returned with certain IDs or codes that aren’t very meaningful to the system receiving the data and extra work might need to be done to decode and transform this data into something that works for the source system.
OK, so how do I right-size my iPaaS?
When we talk about sizing your iPaaS, you want to think about a number of factors. Many of these factors will come into play when you are determining which Mulesoft product you ultimately purchase, and what size that product license is.
Specifically consider:
- How many systems (APIs) will you be connecting?
- Does your source system have an upcharge or licensing cost to use or install its API?
- Do you need two-way data transfer between your systems?
- How much and what types of data will you need to bring from one system to another?
- Think about the teams that will be using your systems and what data they need to see in each.
- Which system will be the primary system for specific data types? (e.g. Salesforce CRM is your source of truth for lead data, but customer shipping addresses in your ERP system are the primary authority on customer addresses.)
- How quickly does new data need to show up in another system? Near-real time? Or is a nightly or hourly transfer sufficient?
- Will your integration needs be growing in the future to include more systems or more data?
How can Offprem Technology help?
If you’re interested in learning more about how Salesforce Mulesoft can automate your data transfer needs, please reach out to contact@offprem.tech to schedule a call! As a premiere Salesforce partner with certified Mulesoft developers, in addition to certified professionals across the Salesforce ecosystem, we’re here to help!
Let us know how we can assist automating your data transfers and ask us more about right sizing your integration platform. We’ll help you make informed decisions for your short term budget, with a long-term eye towards expanding your business.