Reading Time: 8 minutes

MuleSoft CONNECT San Francisco wrapped last week and was a huge success with 31 speakers and over 1,000 attendees. Topics ranged from how technology makes innovation more democratic to the impacts of digital transformation on both employees and customers. 

See below for the top four highlights we captured from MuleSoft CONNECT San Francisco that demonstrate how CIOs and IT leaders are using MuleSoft to deliver value in an ever-changing, competitive landscape. 

WeWork’s API strategy became critical for the future 

latest report
Learn why we are the Leaders in API management and iPaaS

WeWork offers workspace, community, and services to 268,000 members and has seen an incredible growth trajectory since its founding in 2010. Given this, the IT team’s ability to build scalable solutions to grow with the business was critical. This is especially important as WeWork continues expanding into new regions and completes acquisitions to broaden its reach. Michael Hite, WeWork’s Head of Business Systems, explained how his team developed 25+ APIs in just two months to marry disparate systems into one fluid experience. Furthermore, these APIs can be reused to deliver value faster to end consumers — both employees and customers. 

WeWork's Michael Hite and MuleSoft founder Ross Mason during “The democratization of innovation” keynote.
Michael Hite, VP, Head of Business Systems, WeWork, and Ross Mason, MuleSoft Founder, during “The democratization of innovation” keynote.

eBay’s digital transformation empowered IT

eBay, a C2C and B2C eCommerce platform, wanted to improve the user experience for its 10,000+ employees when sharing data between IT and the business. eBay originally partnered with MuleSoft because of the ease of delivery and standardization with ready-made connectors that seamlessly integrate with SAP and Salesforce

But using MuleSoft ultimately facilitated a transformation of eBay’s IT operations — leveraging the inherent Anypoint Platform self-service and reuse capabilities, eBay’s developers are now capable of finding and deploying published APIs. The development of common technology and employee learning created a shared understanding in addition to the ability to speed development and scale. Shared assets led to a federated IT team model that coordinated with a central team to design and build the highest value assets for reuse. After working with MuleSoft, newly onboarded eBay resources could ramp up and begin developing APIs in one week compared to the three weeks it previously took. More importantly, eBay teams became empowered to learn and share. They currently use 50+ self-built APIs. 

Salesforce used integration to accelerate company-wide initiatives

Salesforce is experiencing rapid growth, and as CTO, Michael Gonella is responsible for ensuring technology powers innovation and drives business strategy forward. He and his CIO look across the business to identify systems in use, understand their capabilities, and develop a roadmap for continued growth. MuleSoft became increasingly important in Salesforce’s strategy, particularly when it saw the great potential for reuse.

One example Michael gave was around Workday integrations its initial rollout of MuleSoft, noting, “it just caught fire after we started going.” He continued, explaining how they began building integrations around Salesforce employees before suddenly pivoting to its onboarding and recruitment processes. Using Anypoint Platform, the team was able to create seamless experiences for people joining the company, ensuring they were set up for success starting day one. “We quickly recognized how the investments we made in one space were paying us off in a whole new application,” Michael said.

MuleSoft CMO Vidya Peters and Michael Gonella, Salesforce CTO, onstage at MuleSoft CONNECT San Francisco 2019.
Vidya Peters, MuleSoft CMO, and Michael Gonella, Salesforce CTO, onstage at MuleSoft CONNECT San Francisco 2019.

The State of Colorado enhanced service delivery through better data sharing 

The State of Colorado faced negative press about its benefits management system which had been plagued for years with technical problems and millions of dollars in incorrect payments. Colorado needed to transform its system and used APIs to integrate multiple systems and databases. With this new infrastructure in place, Colorado citizens applying for state benefits saw their eligibility determination time periods drop from weeks to minutes. This was an enormous change that made tangible differences in everyday people’s lives. 

But APIs enabled Colorado to go beyond this one tactical project and truly expand IT’s value add. With the data Colorado had on beneficiaries, the state was also able to create partnerships between other state agencies to better coordinate human services. If a person was applying for Medicaid, there was a significant probability this individual would also be eligible for housing and food stamps. Colorado’s API-enabled benefits management system tied integrated data to users, allowing the state to offer coordinated government services. This change prompted a major shift in how citizens viewed state services and propelled Colorado to lead the way in digital government services

If you missed MuleSoft CONNECT San Francisco, there are still four more MuleSoft CONNECT events scheduled around the world this year. Check out the MuleSoft CONNECT website today to learn more.