While we won’t comment on the price paid for Mulesoft, as true value is realized by execution, we will comment on the potential and the excellent strategic fit this product has with the direction of Salesforce and insurance industry technology.
One hard trend, to use a term from the writing of Daniel Burris, is that integration to third-party data and microservices will become more important as corporate application architectures strive to meet changing customer expectations and provide the desired customer experience in the long term.
Mulesoft, a more lightweight product than some of its competitors, provides an integration layer required for the future state of application architectures. Adding Mulesoft to the Salesforce toolkit immediately provides higher market recognition and access to an expanded Salesforce, before considering additional research and development dollars that could be channeled its way. This is a clear win for Mulesoft.
Within the insurance industry, Salesforce implementations require integration to many core systems, as well as enterprise services. Integrating Mulesoft with the Salesforce products enhances their integration capabilities and helps to future-proof Salesforce installations for changes in the legacy application portfolio.
Insurance carriers and core system providers are moving to microservices. Some are incorporating integration layers into their products. While having an integration layer talk to a second layer may seem like overkill, this may actually provide enhanced support and flexibility for hybrid cloud implementations of insurance application portfolios.
Salesforce gained access to a critical capability (software and talent) needed to be successful in the long term, as well as access to a client base. Strategically, this is an excellent fit for both companies. Cultures may clash and intentions may not be realized, but we are optimistic about this announcement from an insurance capability and delivery perspective.
One question is how quickly insurers will adapt to the microservices approach. Technology vendors and consultants are now moving in that direction, and they will be educating the insurance industry about enabling headless implementations with more flexible architectures. But, for the time being, most insurers will still be looking for complete systems (both platform and UI) to power their business. If the first step is easier integration between systems while laying the groundwork for a more flexible infrastructure in the future, that’s still a win.
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