MuleSoft positions as a leader in many of Gartner’s Magic Quadrants. The two most relevant are Enterprise Integration and API Management where MuleSoft sits in the Leader quadrant among few vendors. These commendations prove that MuleSoft has the capabilities to support trends such as Internet of Things with the MuleSoft Exchange connector market, cloud and on premise solutions, and extensibility for its MuleSoft Runtime. The most relevant capabilities are:
First to set the stage, if you are unfamiliar with MuleSoft or other gateway vendors, each offers some policy logic processing out of the box. Converting XML to JSON, Data transformation, security logic, routing logic, or even just Reg-ex parsing for your HTTP requests and response. If you have used the MuleSoft Anypoint Studio, it uses about 1.5GB of disk space for the full-blown IDE, and around 1 GB of RAM. Now, imagine if you could utilize all of your logic flows (functions discussed above, data transforming, policy logic) on a Raspberry Pi with a single core processor, and 512mb. When I found out about this I was shocked. The full MuleSoft runtime – 150mb installer in size, with all my logic flows, can be placed on an IoT hub, or any device meeting the hardware specification to enhance my IoT strategy.
- MuleSoft Runtime – MuleSoft can be run on any IoT Developer board – minimum specs are just to have 512mb boards, which most consumer and commercial boards already meet. Just to refine this, check out the first link above, you will see that the MuleSoft runtime that is 150mb, can be install on your IoT Hub, and you have the full capabilities of MuleSoft’s features. One of these examples can be used directly from MuleSoft developers. Referencing the image to show some of the features here, you can see a sample of what the run time can do. If you’re not shocked yet, then let us dive deeper with this example and explain some details.
The Architecture flow: The raspberry Pi has a Linux flavor running, and MuleSoft runtime installed on it which contain logic flows. Cloud Hub offers a hosted solution for your MuleSoft Applications and a Message Queue broker, which is AnypointMQ. The IoT devices connected to the hub running the MuleSoft runtime will transmit data to the hub, the hub will perform your logic flows, and then publish the data to the MQ in Cloud Hub. The free connector in the Exchange can be utilized to create any logic flows necessary, including data transformation.
Key Points:
- Save time on setup and development – MuleSoft offers its runtime engine for small size factor IoT boards
- Handle security and logic with ease – Data Transformation and other logic process can be performed on the runtime board
- Anypoint Exchange – MuleSoft has an open market for connectors with many vendors. This means there are offerings for out of the box solutions that your developers do not have to code for, but can integrate with. Common connectors such as Salesforce are there for your CRM, but the one in focus today is the MQTT Connector. MQTT(MQ Telemetry Transport) is a machine to machine transport protocol, is ideal for low bandwidth use cases – especially in sensor communication for IoT. Utilizing this connector, with MuleSoft’s AnypointMQ enables your IoT solution. AnypointMQ acts as your MQ broker out of the box, and all that is required is to configure the MQ connector to your MQ broker to establish the publishing and subscribing for topics.
Key Points:
- Huge time to market boost – users have access to Connectors, Templates, Examples, and APIs in the exchange.
- AnypointMQ – You will have a hard time finding vendors that will provide a hosted MQ Broker solution out of the box. MuleSoft is a rare breed that offer AnypointMQ as a solution for IoT, or messaging. This enables your smart devices to communicate to your MuleSoft runtime, and stay in the same vendor technology to communicate back to your backend via Anypoint MQ.
Key Point: Wholesome technology offering – MuleSoft brings together IoT by offering a MQ Broker with its technology offering, tying together end-to-end communication in one technology stack.
MuleSoft covers many gaps in offering a wholesome IoT solution:
- IoT Hub – MuleSoft runtime to manage your smart devices
- Security/Transport Protocol – MuleSoft security with AnypointMQ, and a MQTT Broker integrated into the solution.
- Edge Network – Anypoint Platform, on premise, or in the cloud to integrate into your backend and process your IoT Data.
With an evolving connector market, beautiful interface, and forward thinking product releases, MuleSoft shows off well with its capabilities for Internet of Things.
