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MuleSoft Unveils Cloud Integration PaaS Beta: Page 2 of 2

Cote says it won't be easy for the company to compete billion-dollar companies like IBM and Dell. "The other risky part, with respect to Boomi and Cast Iron, is that Dell and IBM really like those two offerings at the moment: the acquisitions haven't gotten lost in those big companies." He says if you look through the cloud computing success stories of each of those companies, many of them rest on the cloud integration solutions Boomi and Cast Iron drive.

"As ever, MuleSoft's advantage is being small, theoretically giving it the nimbleness to deliver broader functionality more frequently than the larger vendors without worrying about cannibalizing existing revenue. For example, with IBM you have all sorts of 'potential' revenue conflict between Cast Iron's possible ambitions with queues, integrations, and even ETL software over in their Info group." An alternative to the David-and-Goliath scenario, he suggests, for a large company to buy them and give them the same attention given to Boomi and Cast Iron now.

The category of cloud integration is seeing a lot of interest and use now, says Cote. "You can see MuleSoft moving to that demand here, while IBM Cast Iron, Dell Boomi, and dozens of other little startups and projects are servicing that need as well. As with any type of software, whether it's running on-premise or in the cloud, you usually need to use several applications in concert to get the most value. This can be simple things like integrating between CRM and marketing & automation software to start and keep up with what your customers are doing, to more complex things like syncing between your ERP system and cloud-based invoicing. While there's definite savings and flexibility gains that using cloud-based platforms or, even just, SaaS applications, businesses will still need to look for ways to integrate data between all the end points on the cloud and on the ground."

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