Here’s our weekly roundup of the top 5 integration and API articles of the week. Take a look, let us know if we missed any, and share your thoughts in the comments. Don’t forget to follow @MuleSoft to stay up-to-date on integration & APIs!
How GM Got Religion And Released An API
GM is betting big that software developers will help them take cars into the 21st century. The road to the future is built on APIs.
How Data Integration Is Changing the Enterprise Landscape
Complex integration challenges are changing the enterprise. Chief Data Officers will emerge to make sense of all the data integration needs.
APIs enable companies to tap into digital assets to create new revenue streams, extend their value proposition through partner-delivered capabilities, and dramatically improve agility and responsiveness to new business opportunities. But APIs are no magical elixir. “Build it and they will come” may work in the movies, but in the universe of APIs, it couldn’t be further from the truth.
The success of an API hinges on adoption by the developer community – 3rd party developers in the case of public APIs, your own developers in the case of internal APIs – and achieving adoption requires careful planning at the outset. If you’re looking to improve an existing API, launch a new API initiative or just drive more adoption of your APIs, take a look at MuleSoft’s latest whitepaper – “Secrets of a Great API”.
This whitepaper provides a set of guidelines to help you deliver winning API programs. In it you’ll learn what developers want, how to design for great user experience, proven strategies for driving developer adoption, and how to make your API stand out from the crowd. Get started by downloading the whitepaper today »
As companies adopt more and more SaaS applications, there is a pressing need to connect these applications to each other, as well as to legacy applications. Companies who don’t create connectivity between SaaS applications end up with information silos. Front office applications, without information from the system of record, don’t provide value. Back office data, if not surfaced in a system of engagement, is irrelevant.
What if you could connect all your SaaS and on-premises applications with a single platform? You could achieve a single view of your customer, across every application that touches the customer lifecycle. You could streamline your quote to cash office, removing error-prone, manual processes and accelerating the revenue cycle. You could unlock your back office by bringing relevant records and information into systems like Salesforce to bring value to your sales teams.
Here’s our weekly roundup of the top 5 integration and API articles of the week. Take a look, let us know if we missed any, and share your thoughts in the comments. Don’t forget to follow @MuleSoft to stay up-to-date on integration & APIs!
Infographic: The API Economy Explained
Software is eating the world; APIs are eating software. So what is the API economy and how can you capture its value? Check out this infographic to find out!
Five Great API Ecosystem Lessons from Evernote
Building an API ecosystem into a platform is essential for joining the API economy. Evernote learned 5 important lessons on their path to “platformification”.
This week’s Meet a Muley posts takes us over to the Digital Marketing team! As Sr Manager of Marketing and Analytics, Nima tackles MuleSoft’s analytics infrastructure as we scale. Read on to learn about why we consider him the star of all of MuleSoft’s dance-offs!
First thought that came to mind when you looked into the mirror today?
Who’s that good looking guy?
How did you find MuleSoft?
MuleSoft found me.
What were you doing before this?
Head of Internet Marketing @ eBay Advertising
How’d you end up deciding on MuleSoft?
It was an opportunity to work in a startup environment where I could take ownership, solve difficult problems, and be part of building something big. Working at MuleSoft gives me the opportunity to make an impact while doing what I love and there’s nothing more satisfying than that.
How was the interview process? Any funny or embarrassing stories?
I had my first interview over the phone with Mahau (VP of Marketing) and we instantly clicked and I knew I’d enjoy working with him. During the face to face interview, I had a fun time discussing how we could do closed loop marketing (nerdy, I know). And Greg, our CEO, didn’t shake my hand, saying that he was recovering from a cold. Little did he know he couldn’t avoid me for long! When I got hired, he and I shared the same desk for my first 2 weeks and I finally got my handshake.
Is it difficult being in SF and working with teams in BA?
Not really, our BA team starts earlier and stays late, so we’re able to communicate well. Above all, it makes the reunions much more fun!
What was your first job?
QA Engineer at a TV Manufacturer.
What’s a typical day like for you?
I hit the gym and then get a Jamba Juice protein shake. Then I start the work day by marching from one meeting to another. I have fun with my team brainstorming ideas, identifying areas for improvements, and build strategies for growth. I have the best team. They bring a mix of creativity, analytics, project management, processes, and perspective to the team. Once the day is done and things get quiet, it’s time to actually get some work done.
What are you currently working on?
Building our analytics infrastructure, improving data integrity, accelerating our growth and connecting the world.
Biggest challenge of the day?
How do I eat all of these free lunches and snacks without impacting my productivity. #spoiledmuley
Best perk of being at MuleSoft?
3 P’s: People, Passion, and Products. Working with great people who are passionate about our space, building great products.
Biggest challenge since you’ve been at MuleSoft?
Building a scalable infrastructure where we can measure our business while being nimble and adjusting to the changing needs of an explosively growing company.
What’s something new you learned while being at MuleSoft?
Never underestimate the power of team chemistry. It can do wonders!
Best piece of advice you’ve received?
“Never be content with being good enough and just hitting your goals. Strive to crush your goals and aim higher.”
Most embarrassing moment?
After multiple delayed flights and almost a 40-hour trip, in the middle of a meeting full of VP’s and SVP’s of one of the largest Canadian banks, I ended up mixing up my languages and spoke in Farsi for few sentences before I notice all the blank faces!
Favorite food you could eat everyday if you had to?
If you weren’t doing what you’re doing, what would you do?
Math teacher or a dance instructor. I’ve always been analytical, but back in 2005, after few years of being a manager, I decided I wanted to be more of a leader than just a manager. I was reading “A Whole New Mind” by Daniel H. Pink and in it, Pink claims that the future is ruled by creative people who use the right side of the brain. So, I decided to train the creative side of my brain by learning more about music and dance. I then fell in love with dance, as it helped me improve my creativity, leadership and building harmony in teams.
If you could have any superpower, what would it be and why?
Teleporting. There are so many places to see and not enough time.
If you could have any pet in the world, what would you want?
A dolphin. If you can consider that a pet.
Favorite word?
Devil’s Advocate. Because that’s who I am.
Anything else you’d like to share with us?
I love being outdoors. Whether it’s hiking in Banff or biking in wine country. I’m looking forward to the day I can set up my laptop on my bike so I can work while riding in Sonoma.
That’s it for this week’s Meet a Muley post! Let us know in the comments below if you’d like to hear from someone in particular next week!
Interested in working with talented people? Think you’re a superstar and have what it takes? Visit our MuleSoft Careers page to check out our latest openings.
Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter@MuleSoft for all things integration or check us out on LinkedIn!
It sounds like the title for a fantasy movie, but Google, OAuth and the “confused deputy” is a very common issue. Wikipedia defines a confused deputy as “a computer program that is innocently fooled by some other party into misusing its authority. It is a specific type of privilege escalation” (complete article here).
The Wikipedia article shares an example of a compiler exposed as a paid service. This compiler receives an input source code file and the path where the compiled binary is to be stored. This compiler also keeps a file called BILLING where billing information is updated each time a compilation is requested. If a user were to request a compilation setting the output path to “BILLING”, then the file would be overwritten and the billing information lost. In this case, the compiler is a “confused deputy” because although the client doesn’t have access to the file, it’s tricked the compiler (who does have access) into altering the file.
When looking at options for your next generation integration platform, the development language of the underlying ESB should not be a primary concern. .NET teams in particular often constrain their search to only .NET-centric ESBs, ultimately leaving them few options. If you find yourself in this position, here are a few things to consider:
At its core an ESB is all about interoperability. A strong ESB will support a broad range of standards, protocols, and adapters, enabling integration of services and applications written in any language or platform. A Best of Breed ESB doesn’t care if the services it is connecting are written in Java or C#.
A Best of Breed ESB will enable the majority of integration work to be done through tools that are easy to learn and provide visibility into what is happening in the ESB, rarely requiring developers to write or debug code.
When code is required for customizing integrations, the ESB should provide frameworks, APIs, and templates for the customization. So, for example, a .NET developer customizing a good Java-based ESB would use a small subset of Java, primarily needing to understand Java syntax, not the full breadth of Java technology. A Best of Breed ESB should also be extendable with other familiar languages, such as JavaScript or Python.
Java and C#, the predominant languages in the enterprise, are nearly identical in syntax.
So how should you choose the best ESB solution? As you begin the journey to evaluating your next generation integration platform there are critical components that will help you connect, implement, and deploy faster:
Here’s our weekly roundup of the top 5 integration and API articles of the week. Take a look, let us know if we missed any, and share your thoughts in the comments. Don’t forget to follow @MuleSoft to stay up-to-date on integration & APIs!
Looking back into history helps us understand our present and future. The Industrial Revolution hit its critical mass in 1876. The Internet of Things has hit that point today.
It’s clear BYOD has changed enterprise IT, but that doesn’t make it any less of a security nightmare. Data security, security policies, and integration top the list of problems.
The way businesses use SaaS applications, systems and services has changed dramatically; having a solid integration solution in place is crucial for enabling seamless connectivity. A couple weeks ago, we discussed the importance of choosing an iPaaS solution that fits your specific integration needs – not all businesses are created equally and what works for one organization may not work for another. Properly evaluating a solution can have a huge impact on the success of your business.
With that in mind we thought it would be a good idea to share Gartner’s 2013 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Integration Platform as a Service. The report evaluates 17 separate vendors across numerous dimensions to help you choose the right cloud-based integration platform for your integration challenges.
Here’s our weekly roundup of the top 5 integration and API articles of the week. Take a look, let us know if we missed any, and share your thoughts in the comments. Don’t forget to follow @MuleSoft to stay up-to-date on integration & APIs!
Why Are We Still Talking About Software Integration?
Software integration used to be the customer’s headache in the days of on-premise solutions, but the cloud has changed all that. So why are we still talking about it?
96% of the mass of the universe is represented by something we can’t observe – dark matter. In the API universe far more organizations are building private APIs as opposed to public API programs. This is the dark matter of the API universe.
