Why are APIs so important in delivering modern integrations?

APIs fundamentally change the architecture discussion from asynchronous messaging to synchronous conversational integration. It shifts the paradigm from production of data to a consumption model.

Many newer commercial off the shelf systems (COTS) already ship with this in mind, offering customers some form of integration interface for accessing processes and data within their system. Cloud based SaaS systems such as Salesforce, Fiserv, and Workday also expose their processes and data through a robust API. Other SaaS systems built a SOAP web services interface to access their data.

EDI transactions continue to simplify B2B partner integration. And many business partners are enriching that partner experience by offering a dedicated API allowing their partners to develop their own solutions rather than forcing them to use their web portal.

Unfortunately, this list does not account for the hundreds of legacy systems across the enterprise. These were often developed as an island, with no consideration of integrating with other systems. Being able to build safe, secure, but effective APIs to unlock the data in these legacy systems is an important first step in delivering modern integration architecture to an enterprise.

The MuleSoft platform supports this approach to integration by providing the services and components needed to build a consistent way of accessing system data across all sources of truth be it Cloud based SaaS, B2B, COTS n-tier designed software, or even legacy mainframe software. Publication of these APIs in turn increases its reusability across new and future development efforts. Fine grained control of the deployment of APIs including firewalls, port security, certificates, SSL, and policies, allows architects to share access to a systems data in a safe and secure way that complies with governance, protocols, policies, and in some cases even laws.

Being able to design and develop these APIs using Low-code, no-code tooling also helps IT be more efficient in delivering integration solutions to the business. Particularly if the business users and IT team lack the skills required to develop complex, fault tolerant, performant, scalable application solutions to integration.

The late, great, Tina Turner wrote a song entitled “We don’t need another hero” and this comes to mind when I ask other architects, do we need another integration platform architecture? We are going to begin to answer this question throughout the rest of this book. We will look in more detail at the platform architecture of MuleSoft. We will dig into the MuleSoft resources, accelerators, design approach, and strategies for deployment. We will examine how operations and management of the platform are as much the responsibility of the architect as design diagrams and code reviews.

In short, the rest of this book will serve as your personal guide to MuleSoft platform architecture and an API approach to addressing the modern challenges of enterprise application integration.