Sr. Specialist Quality Assurance at Larsen & Toubro Infotech Ltd.
Real User
Conversion and transition performance is solid
Pros and Cons
  • "I'm not using ESB directly. It is the integration layer, so it's running under the hood. However, the conversion and transformation performance is excellent. Anypoint Enterprise Security is also solid."

    What is our primary use case?

    ESB is middleware for interacting with multiple heterogeneous systems. Our most critical use case is ensuring the connection is ready, systems are interacting seamlessly, data conversion is happening, and the business logic is being applied. 

    The solution is the middleware between the producer and a consumer, and we ensure that the producer is creating the data according to the consumer's requirements. If any orchestration or any transformation is necessary, then MuleSoft performs that. 

    What is most valuable?

    I'm not using ESB directly. It is the integration layer, so it's running under the hood. However, the conversion and transformation performance is excellent. Anypoint Enterprise Security is also solid.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I've been working with ESB for two years, but I'm not exposed to the coding or developing aspects. It is part of the integration layer, and I deal with middleware integration testing.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    Mule ESB's stability is also good.

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    How was the initial setup?

    We have a four-person DevOps team that performed the initial setup, so I wasn't involved, but I think the deployment would be smooth and straightforward because it's on the cloud.

    What other advice do I have?

    Nine out of 10. It's one of the better open-source tools for development. It provides seamless support and transition. I give it a high rating because most organizations are using MuleSoft. 

    IBM and Oracle are also in the middleware market. MuleSoft is open-source and readily available, so people can meet their needs easily with this tool. We have a REST API with minimal integration and configuration, so we can easily use this solution.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    Hybrid Cloud

    If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

    Amazon Web Services (AWS)
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Jose-Ramirez - PeerSpot reviewer
    Software Developer at Softtek
    Real User
    Top 20
    Modernized the way my company offers services and improved the user experience
    Pros and Cons
    • "The solution improved my company by modernizing the way we offer services and improving the user experience."
    • "In the next release, I would like to see improvement in the generator for the DataWeave language so that it's a little more graphic."

    What is our primary use case?

    When I worked for the Sprint telephone company, we used the solution as a bridge between their legacy systems and the front end. We developed a lot of the functionality, for example, logging into users' accounts and activating cell phones.

    How has it helped my organization?

    The solution improved the company by modernizing the way they offer services and improving the user experience.

    What needs improvement?

    In the next release, I would like to see improvement in the generator for the DataWeave language so that it's a little more graphic.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I've been using Mule ESB since 2016, so about six years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    The stability of the solution is great. In fact, the stability is another improvement that the solution brought to the company.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    The solution has great scalability.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    I previously used an eCommerce platform called Intershop, but it's not really an ESB. Intershop allows for the development of the whole eCommerce system, from the back end to the front end. I switched to Mule due to the needs of a new project that I was starting because it acts as a bridge between legacy systems and front-end systems.

    How was the initial setup?

    It was kind of straightforward. We had to study their legacy systems and then make some kind of mapping between those legacy systems and the RESTful APIs handled by Mule.

    What about the implementation team?

    We used a consultant directly from MuleSoft for deployment. It took about an hour or two to deploy the solution, plus time for testing. 

    What other advice do I have?

    To those looking into implementing this solution, I would say that you will enjoy the experience of using Mule.

    I would rate this solution as a ten out of ten. 

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    On-premises
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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    Senior Software Engineer at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees
    Real User
    Best for microservices-based architecture and easy to deploy and manage
    Pros and Cons
    • "It is easily deployable and manageable. It has microservices-based architecture, which means that you can deploy the solution based on your needs, and you can manage the solution very easily."
    • "It should have some amount of logging."

    What is our primary use case?

    This is an enterprise service bus, and it is mainly used for transferring data. For example, it is used when System A has the data that needs to be sent to System B. 

    Our use case is transferring the enterprise data from one enterprise to a different enterprise. We use different types of connectors or connections to get the data, transform the data, and send it to a system. Almost all the integrations work in the same manner.

    It can be deployed on-premise, but nowadays, most of us prefer cloud-based solutions.

    What is most valuable?

    It is easy to use and easy to understand. 

    It is easily deployable and manageable. It has microservices-based architecture, which means that you can deploy the solution based on your needs, and you can manage the solution very easily.

    What needs improvement?

    It should have some amount of logging.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I've been using this solution for almost two years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    It is stable.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    It can scale based on your needs. It is scalable vertically and horizontally.

    We have used it in many projects. Its usage might increase. It depends on the high-level management. If new products are coming, they're going to use it for sure.

    How are customer service and support?

    Their response is based on the subscription. If you are experiencing any production-related issues, they're immediately available. 

    There are various levels of tech support, and the service depends upon the level of support to which you have subscribed. Titanium support is at the highest level.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    We have used webMethods, which is an on-prem solution. 

    How was the initial setup?

    For a cloud-based deployment, there is no need for us to manage anything. It is directly deployable. We build and deploy it. That's all. 

    For an on-prem deployment, a lot more installation is required, but it is a very easy process.

    What about the implementation team?

    We can do an on-prem deployment ourselves. Developers mainly focus on the development aspect of the solutions, and admins manage all deployments.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    We didn't evaluate other options.

    What other advice do I have?

    I would recommend this solution to others. It is the best integration platform for those who are looking to implement or are going for API-based architecture and microservices-based architecture.

    I would rate it a nine out of 10.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    Public Cloud
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Principal Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
    Real User
    Top 20
    The connectors help to connect with a variety of applications, but pricing and support must be improved
    Pros and Cons
    • "The connectors help to connect with a variety of applications."
    • "The initial setup is not easy."

    What is our primary use case?

    Our clients are using the solution for app-to-app integrations and B2B integrations.

    What is most valuable?

    The connectors help to connect with a variety of applications. We have used connectors for Salesforce and Dynamics CRM. The file processing features are useful.

    What needs improvement?

    The initial setup is not easy.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using the solution for ten years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    The tool is stable.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    The tool is scalable if we use the CloudHub and RTF components. Otherwise, ESB isn't scalable. I work with small, medium, and large businesses.

    How are customer service and support?

    The support is not great. We've had certain issues in the past. We did not get good support.

    How would you rate customer service and support?

    Negative

    How was the initial setup?

    I rate the ease of setup a four to five out of ten. We have to do it properly, especially with the hybrid integration.

    What was our ROI?

    The product produces a return on investment. Our build effort has reduced a lot.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    The pricing must be improved. We are not able to use a lot of the features because of the price. The customers are moving to other cloud solutions.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    We have used TIBCO.

    What other advice do I have?

    We are integrators. We have very minimal implementations of Mule. The product has good functionalities and capabilities. We recommend the product to our customers. However, we are very careful about our recommendations because of the pricing. Overall, I rate the tool a seven to eight out of ten.

    Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Integrator
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    Saranjit Charoenmuang - PeerSpot reviewer
    Technology Advisory, Integration Practice Leader at Slalom Consulting
    Real User
    Top 10
    A great solution to get data with a straightforward setup and good scalability
    Pros and Cons
    • "The setup is straightforward."
    • "The stability could be improved."

    What is our primary use case?

    We use this solution to get data.

    What needs improvement?

    The stability could be improved.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    We have been using this solution for about two years.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    The scalability is good, and I rate it a nine out of ten. We have about 20 users using this solution. We do not have plans to increase the number of users, as it depends on the number of use cases we deploy. We have developers, managers and business users using this solution.

    How are customer service and support?

    Technical support comes with the subscription plan.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    We used Oracle ten years ago.

    How was the initial setup?

    The setup is straightforward. It was a fast deployment and took one week.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    The subscription is annual.

    What other advice do I have?

    I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Gowtham Thotapalli - PeerSpot reviewer
    Solutions Architect at Persistence System
    Real User
    Top 20
    Easy and intuitive tool for developers but should have more customization capabilities
    Pros and Cons
    • "This tool has exceptional API management and integration connectors in addition to multiple out of the box connectors."
    • "We would like the ability to use our own code. This would allow us to develop customizations with ease. Additionally, it would be nice to have more analytics or insights on the exchanged information between databases."

    What is our primary use case?

    I am a solution architect where I design solutions by leveraging integration tools, low-code platforms, and BPM platforms. We are using Mule EBS for transformation purposes.

    How has it helped my organization?

    Mule allows us to transform our data into our desired outcome and then translate it. This allows it to be moved forward for further processing.

    What is most valuable?

    This tool has exceptional API management and integration connectors in addition to multiple out of the box connectors. 

    The UI is good. From a development perspective, it's pretty easy and pretty intuitive for the developers to work with. We have fresh graduates who have started picking up MuleSoft. Its user interface is pretty intuitive.

    What needs improvement?

    We would like the ability to use our own code. This would allow us to develop customizations with ease. Additionally, it would be nice to have more analytics or insights on the exchanged information between databases.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I am working on my third project that utilizes Mule.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    The solution is quite stable. We have not experienced any stability related issues as of now.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    We have not had any issues regarding up-scaling and other things. We are in the process of increasing the usage of Mule so that it can take up to two thousand requests per unit minute.

    How are customer service and support?

    The last time I raised a ticket with them where we needed additional guidance, they were pretty good and responsive. On one of my previous projects that I worked with where we needed some information or we needed some additional guidance from them, we were able to collaborate with them and solve the issue pretty quickly.

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup was straightforward as we chose to go with the Mule cloud where the infrastructure was taken care of by them. We only needed to ensure connectivity between on-premise databases/systems and Mule cloud.

    Because it's their cloud, the setup is much easier. It would be interesting to see what the setup is like for an on-premise or hybrid environment. It might be a completely different setup. It would probably be more complex because you have to go through certain process to ensure the compliance and the security standards of the organization are met, and that the connectivity is established.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    We looked in to using Apache Camel and TIBCO.

    What other advice do I have?

    It’s a pretty good tool to have it when you try to go with a microservices type of an architecture where you want to decouple your systems and where you want all the systems to talk to each other, share that knowledge, and create those experiences that you want as part of your digital transformation journey. This tool perfectly fits that. It's a good tool to have as part of your digital transformation journey.

    I would rate it a seven out of ten.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    Public Cloud

    If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

    Other
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    PeerSpot user
    Solution Architect at Aractronic
    Consultant
    It can embrace the architectural style and SOA practices in place where it’s deployed.

    What is most valuable?

    • Deployment strategies: Mule supports a wide variety of deployment strategies.
    • SOA architectural style: Mule can embrace the architectural style and SOA practices in place where it’s deployed.
    • Focused on higher-level concerns: It deals extensively with all the details of integration and provides a wide range of connectors. It has the ability to be an integration framework open to all sorts of protocols.
    • They have comprehensive and up-to-date documentation, a subject on which the vendor has made huge progress recently.

    How has it helped my organization?

    It integrates between an ERP (J2EE inventory module), a CRM (PHP) and a new mobile development platform (Angular JavaScript web services).

    The aim of the solution was to connect to the inventory application provided by the ERP system, read and send data to the CRM, then hook that to the smartphone with a user-friendly UI.

    Some requirements:

    • Integrate applications or systems on premise or in the cloud.
    • Use out-of-the-box connectors to create SaaS integration applications.
    • Build and expose APIs.
    • Consume APIs.

    What needs improvement?

    I think using Anypoint Studio at the beginning can be seen as not straightforward, especially when dealing with the visual editor. A vertical representation of the flow can really improve the understanding of the case and a good mapping to the use case.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using it for 1-2 years.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    Like any application, Mule is constrained by the limits of memory size and CPU performance.

    Threading profiles define the overall capacity of your Mule instance in terms of scaling and capacity. The performance of each moving part involved in processing each request will also impact the global throughput of your application.

    How was the initial setup?

    Setup was realy straightforward as the product is well documented. Also, we should mention the efforts of a good and reactive community.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    Before choosing, we also evaluated:

    • Oracle SOA Suite
    • Open ESB
    • JBoss ESB

    What other advice do I have?

    My advice to organisations looking to implement this product is to begin with the community version as a proof-of-concept and a way to avoid risks. You can then directly migrate to the enterprise edition as the Anypoint Platform offers tools that architects and developers across the enterprise can adapt quickly to design, build, and manage the entire lifecycle of their APIs, applications and products. With Mule as its core runtime engine, Anypoint Platform is built with open technologies to promote reusability, modularity and collaboration, increasing developer productivity and project speed.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Software Engineer at ADM
    Real User
    Top 10
    Powerful data transformation capability and good support through community forums
    Pros and Cons
    • "Once it is started, we don't see any problems on a day to day basis."
    • "We would like to have a built-in logging framework in which we can do auditing."

    What is our primary use case?

    We are using the on-premises version of this solution.

    What is most valuable?

    The most valuable feature is DataWeave. It allows for the transformation of data, for example to JSON or from JSON. It's very powerful.

    There are also many connectors available, which is nice.

    What needs improvement?

    We would like to have a built-in logging framework in which we can do auditing. In our case, we are working on-premise. We are not using the cloud solution, so we have MMC, which is not enough in a high transaction environment.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    Six years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    This is a very stable solution. It doesn't require much memory or other resources. Once it is started, we don't see any problems on a day to day basis. Even when you need to make changes, they are easy to do. 

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    The scalability is easy. It can be done horizontally or vertically. We are scaling horizontally because we don't have any space left in the server. If we need to expand the number of nodes then it depends upon the licensing.

    Our development team has three people, and I am the lead.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    The community forums for this solution have been very helpful. You find plenty of information there. In the past three or four years, I have only raised three issues. They were related to the VM, and not the product itself, so I did not need product assistance.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    We did not use another solution prior to this one. We started with the open source solution, version 3.1.0, and we implemented all of the services. We then paid for a licensed version.

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup is pretty easy. We have multiple applications bounded by that domain, for resource sharing, so it was easy.

    What about the implementation team?

    I set up the solution myself.

    What was our ROI?

    The calculation of ROI is difficult because we work in terms of providing support to other applications. There are many departments involved, and we cannot calculate our support in terms of money.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    Before moving to the licensed version of this solution, we had a meeting to discuss the IBM Oracle web method. After looking at everything, including our code and the capability that Oracle has, we decided to continue with Mule ESB because of the ease in moving from the older, open source version, to the newer one. All we had to do is download it and continue with our work.

    What other advice do I have?

    My advice to others who are implementing this solution is to first become acquainted with the forums. There are always reports coming out about the software, and new technologies. The next thing is that I would suggest always starting with the latest version. Older versions are available, but you should install the most recent one.

    I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) Report and find out what your peers are saying about MuleSoft, IBM, Software AG, and more!
    Updated: March 2024
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    Download our free ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) Report and find out what your peers are saying about MuleSoft, IBM, Software AG, and more!