Salesforce is buying MuleSoft at enterprise value of $6.5B • Hacker News Board

Re: Salesforce is buying MuleSoft at enterprise value of $6.5B

#61

Post by junto » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 10:35 AM UTC

tootie wrote: post #34

sb8244 wrote: post #32

I think that MuleSoft is a really great business, although I wouldn't use it personally just due to not being in the right industry. For back-office environment with tons of point 2 point integrations, it just seems to make sense. Business model is good. Once you're in, going out is really tough. This is exactly like the SFDC app cloud.

I'm in the right business and I still don't understand why I'd ever need this kind of software.

We use Mulesoft a fair bit as a proxy to our various microservices. IT can do the rate limiting and redirection as a front, whilst keeping our microservices hidden behind the DMZ.

We also use it to transform data from different services when we do integrations, especially old school SOAP ones that we don't want to support directly anymore, and have been replaced by simpler to manage and develop REST APIs. Mulesoft is pretty good for that kind of thing.

Re: Salesforce is buying MuleSoft at enterprise value of $6.5B

#62

Post by junto » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 10:37 AM UTC

occams_chainsaw wrote: post #44

senthilnayagam wrote: post #40

salesforce offers its api on swagger/openapi format and MuleSoft was promoting RAML. hope MuleSoft starts offering openapi tools in its new avatar.

The RAML just ends up generating the usual swagger/openapi stuff now

Mulesoft have been moving away from RAML I believe, although it is still petty core to their product.

https://blogs.mulesoft.com/dev/api-dev/open-api-raml-better-...

Re: Salesforce is buying MuleSoft at enterprise value of $6.5B

#63

Post by sweeneyrod » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 12:29 PM UTC

meritt wrote: post #29

philipDS wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very impressive! Annual Run Rate is different from ARR though. Annual Run Rate is probably just taking one (or a few) months, and extrapolate that to a year. Still great progress for having raised to little though.

> Annual Run Rate is different from ARR though What exactly does ARR mean if not Annual Run Rate?

It's something that pirates say.

Re: Salesforce is buying MuleSoft at enterprise value of $6.5B

#64

Post by Maven911 » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 1:17 PM UTC

valuearb wrote: post #47

treis wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the right business too, and one of the things I've realized is that it's not about building software developers need. It's about building software that people authorized to spend a lot of money think the enterprise needs. It's dazzling to listen the Mulesoft folks talk about experience APIs and system APIs while dragging and dropping stuff. I can see why people would go for it.

At my previous job I had to write code to consume mulesoft APIs. Was miserable project, Mulesoft is literally hot garbage.

Can you explain? It's being pushed heavily as an api spec, api catalog and middleware, and it's notclear to me why we really need it.

Re: Salesforce is buying MuleSoft at enterprise value of $6.5B

#65

Post by oicu812 » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 1:44 PM UTC

valuearb wrote: post #48

oicu812 wrote: post #11

This seems strange to me since Salesforce already has an ownership stake in the chief competitor to MuleSoft, Informatica Cloud. Salesforce was one of the four companies that took Informatica private [1] three years ago but it seemed like Salesforce was still treating Informatica, MuleSoft and the other cloud data integration solutions equally. Now if Salesforce fully owns MuleSoft, I expect them to prefer it over th…

Informatica a competitor to Mulesoft? But at my last gig, ba Fortune 500 company, we had both! Are you implying our IS group was a bunch of idiots? Cause I can totally see that.

At my last gig, another ba Fortune 500 company, we had multiple on-premise data integration tools including Informatica, DataStage, SSIS and an open source ETL tool. Yes, the idiocracy runs deep with this company as well.

Re: Salesforce is buying MuleSoft at enterprise value of $6.5B

#66

Post by chrisweekly » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 1:58 PM UTC

codeulike wrote: post #58

ben_jones wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who just finished a custom caching solution for Salesforce-backed data I couldn't agree more. There are a number of solutions out there that attempt to mirror salesforce to i.e. Postgres, but they are expensive. Plenty of people want to leave Salesforce but are caught in by the cost of exfiltration. That said Salesforce isn't THAT bad. There are plenty of edge cases, dark spots in documentation, shitty pri…

Salesforce deserve a lot of credit for staying online for 15 years or so while upgrading and expanding the platform every six months, while minimising breakage to customers' customisations. Imagine how most projects would look if you tried that, the developers would usually want to scrap it and re-write after 18 months or so.

Also, massive credit for being a pioneer of SaaS per se. IMHO that's the most profound and impressive aspect to their success and legacy.

Re: Salesforce is buying MuleSoft at enterprise value of $6.5B

#67

Post by Maven911 » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 1:59 PM UTC

I am still trying to wrap my head around why is Mule needed. There is a large push at several companies because of: Enterprise Service Bus to help integrate applications, REST API design specing and testing (Mule AnyPoint platform), and API gateways for throttling and applying security policies on API consumption.

1. But there are other message middleware in place, brokers like Kafka, Tibco etc. Is an ESB really needed ? What is the actual benefit ?

2. Do web developers really benefit from using Mule's API design software ? Are there other powerful and free alternatives (technically Mule Community is free but lacks funcationality) or better tools ?

3. What do you lose out if you towards the Mule-way (ESB, API first strategy) ?

Re: Salesforce is buying MuleSoft at enterprise value of $6.5B

#68

Post by spraak » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 2:08 PM UTC

oicu812 wrote: post #11

This seems strange to me since Salesforce already has an ownership stake in the chief competitor to MuleSoft, Informatica Cloud. Salesforce was one of the four companies that took Informatica private [1] three years ago but it seemed like Salesforce was still treating Informatica, MuleSoft and the other cloud data integration solutions equally. Now if Salesforce fully owns MuleSoft, I expect them to prefer it over th…

Buying a competitor isn't so strange, though

Re: Salesforce is buying MuleSoft at enterprise value of $6.5B

#69

Post by joneholland » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 2:31 PM UTC

Maven911 wrote: post #67

I am still trying to wrap my head around why is Mule needed. There is a large push at several companies because of: Enterprise Service Bus to help integrate applications, REST API design specing and testing (Mule AnyPoint platform), and API gateways for throttling and applying security policies on API consumption. 1. But there are other message middleware in place, brokers like Kafka, Tibco etc. Is an ESB really need…

No modern company is pushing esb anymore. It’s an architectural failure still being pushed by vendors and has been architects.

I use it as a canary to know if a company is technically inept.

Re: Salesforce is buying MuleSoft at enterprise value of $6.5B

#70

Post by treis » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 2:33 PM UTC

Maven911 wrote: post #64

valuearb wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my previous job I had to write code to consume mulesoft APIs. Was miserable project, Mulesoft is literally hot garbage.

Can you explain? It's being pushed heavily as an api spec, api catalog and middleware, and it's notclear to me why we really need it.

A huge part of the benefit of software like Mulesoft's is being a common standard. If your the type of company that will have 50 developers working on your ESB and services that's big. So is the expectation that in 30 years you can hire a new batch of developers that will quickly grok your ESB because Mulesoft will still be a thing.

Mulesoft does have a lot of cool functionality, but my impression is that unless you are the type of organization with dozens of systems, decades long timespan, and dozens of developers that Mulesoft isn't worth the money.