Whitepaper

Build a Foundation for

AI with Integration
Unlock AI-powered composability with MuleSoft.
 Contents
Executive Summary 03

Introduction 04

1 Part 1: API Development Fundamentals 05

APIs are building blocks
Craft your API specification
Implement your API vision

2 Part 2: Build an Application Network 08

The concept of an application network
Utilize Anypoint Exchange for universal connectivity

3 Part 3: Extend the Application Network 10

AI-powered integration
Data-powered integration
Modernize B2B integrations via EDI and APIs
Power integrations for industry-specific solutions

Conclusion 16
Executive Summary
Integration is critical in consolidating and unlocking data across various business
landscapes — meanwhile enterprise organizations have an average of 991 apps,
and only 28% of these are connected. That’s why 62% of IT leaders feel that their
organization is unprepared to fully harmonize their data systems to leverage AI
technologies.

Customer expectations are higher than ever, with 39% of customers reporting they
have taken their business elsewhere when their expectations weren’t met. To rise to
the new level of demand, organizations must ensure their data is accessible across
the enterprise to streamline operations and enable a competitive edge.

MuleSoft enables organizations to harness the power of APIs to automate processes

and connect data systems. This in turns makes it easier to leverage AI, helping meet
increasing customer expectations.

This whitepaper explores MuleSoft’s integration product portfolio, emphasizing the

necessity of integration to realize AI’s full potential.

3
Ongoing Challenges Stand in Our Way

Siloed systems, Heterogenous Limited Manual processes Security, governance,

structured & integration IT capacity & inability to act on and privacy concerns
unstructured data enviroments insights

Where we’re going

Generative AI Autonomous
AI & Copilots

83% of IT Leaders say AI has increased developer productivity

Source: 2024 Connectivity Benchmark Report

991 the number of average applications used by businesses

Source: 2024 Connectivity Benchmark Report
Introduction
Organizations have experienced many disruptive technology shifts over the last
two decades — from the adoption of SaaS, to migration to the cloud, and the rise of
automation. While these changes might feel as if they have happened over a long
time, many companies still struggle to keep up.

With the rapid rise of generative AI, IT teams are under increased pressure, as 86%
of IT leaders expect generative AI to play a big role in their digital transformation.
Yet organizations today are already dealing with a complex web of siloed systems
and data, heterogeneous metadata across environments, and a lack of security and
governance.

To embrace new technologies and keep up with industry trends, an organization’s

entire collection of digital building blocks, including data, LLMs, and processes, must
be streamlined and connected.

Because of Salesforce Einstein, AI has been woven into the fabric of MuleSoft’s
product ecosystem. This underlying AI platform empowers developers to effortlessly
leverage advanced AI capabilities. The Einstein Trust Layer makes it possible to weave

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AI into applications and integrations in a secure and controlled way. And Einstein’s
chat-based experiences allow developers to build APIs and integrations from natural
language prompts.

Salesforce Einstein integrates seamlessly across MuleSoft’s offerings, enabling

smarter and faster decision-making, automating routine tasks, and providing insights
that drive more personalized and effective customer engagements. Through this
integration and APIs, MuleSoft simplifies the complexities of digital transformation
and equips developers with the tools to work faster, smarter, and more intuitively in
today’s AI-driven landscape.

To begin your integration journey, it is critical to understand the fundamentals of APIs.

80% of IT leaders report already using multiple AI models, and the mean
number of AI models used by IT organizations is estimated to increase by
69% within the next three years. Gartner predicts more than 30% of the
increase in demand for APIs will come from AI and tools using LLMs by 2026.
1

Part 1: API development fundamentals

APIs are the foundation of modern-day integration. They are the core elements
of delivering business capabilities that balance innovation, speed and operational
stability. A single API is a gateway to information or data from a specific system or
application.

However, APIs’ true value lies in their ability to be used together. When combined,
APIs can craft robust digital experiences that seamlessly incorporate hundreds of
back-end systems.

APIs are building blocks By leveraging your organization’s APIs

as building blocks, you can build vibrant
Today, virtually every digital experience we experiences for your customers while
interact with is powered by APIs including maintaining agility and scalability.
mobile apps, websites, smart home Furthermore, you can ensure your
devices, and streaming services. This is why experiences can grow and evolve with
APIs are often thought of as the building the demands of the market and the ever-
changing expectations of users.

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blocks for composed applications.

By connecting them, you can quickly add As we look to the future, APIs are
functional components for your customers positioned to continue playing a vital role.
and employees in systems, such as: With the rise of AI, streamlined access
to data from various systems is more
• Checkout systems important than ever.
• Shipping cost estimators
• New mobile experiences To harness the full potential of artificial
intelligence, a loop between disparate
The modularity of APIs is a critical benefit systems and the growing sea of large
in today’s digital-first world. This agility language models (LLMs) is required.
allows organizations to quickly add new Properly integrated and managed APIs are
capabilities to their existing experience and the key to unlocking this potential. Adding
adjust previously built projects. LLMs to your digital estate without a clear
integration strategy is a recipe for disaster.
Craft your API specification
An API specification (spec) is the blueprint for your API and outlines its functionalities,
data formats, and endpoints. It’s a critical step in API development and ensures clarity
and alignment among stakeholders before coding begins.

Best practices suggest that your API spec accommodate both the RESTful API Modeling
Language (RAML) and the OpenAPI Specification (OAS) formats.

MuleSoft offers extensive support for API spec development through the Design
Center in Anypoint Platform, facilitating cloud-based, collaborative spec development,
featuring a configuration-driven low-code experience. This allows users to efficiently
outline API structures without deep coding knowledge, making the process accessible
and streamlined.

Key features: Anypoint Platform Design Center

Automated documentation - Enable developers to generate API

documentation automatically
Mocking service - Test APIs with sample or mock data
Share API models - Collaborate and adjust APIs at the design stage

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MuleSoft product highlight
MuleSoft’s Anypoint Code Builder is a next-gen cloud-based IDE that
seamlessly integrates spec writing with API implementation. This ensures a
fluid development journey from spec-to-code and offers a comprehensive
environment for end-to-end API development. MuleSoft streamlines API spec
creation through these tools, making it easier for teams to develop, test, and
refine their APIs efficiently.

Learn more
Implement your API vision
After completing the API specification, teams must add business logic to our API outline.
MuleSoft’s integrated platform makes it easy to import the specification into an integrated
development environment (IDE) — Anypoint Studio or the newer VS Code-based Anypoint
Code Builder. The IDE scaffolds the API into a template flow for each HTTP method
so that developers can focus on crafting the specific business logic for the API without
worrying about configuration and setup.

Accelerate development with connectors and AI

MuleSoft’s online marketplace, Anypoint Exchange, provides hundreds of
connectors to common business systems, whether it’s Snowflake, Amazon S3,
NetSuite, or something else. This marketplace also hosts accelerators (industry-
specific pre-packaged connectors and templates) and examples to speed up
the API development process significantly.

Furthermore, Einstein for Anypoint Code Builder offers a natural language

experience that can write code, offer suggestions, and automate tasks to
streamline the creation of APIs and integrations. With the power of connectors
and AI-assisted development, developers can build robust APIs and integrations

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quickly and efficiently.

Simplifying deployment, governance, and monitoring

The final step in bringing your API to life involves deployment, governance,
and monitoring. With one-click deployment capabilities to CloudHub, our
managed cloud service, deploying your API is a seamless experience. Anypoint
Platform simplifies API management and security, offering intuitive interfaces
to apply API policies and enforce governance standards. Additionally, MuleSoft
provides robust monitoring tools to ensure your APIs are performing optimally
and securely.
 2

Part 2: Build an application network

The application network is a strategic framework of interconnected applications
and services that facilitates seamless communication and data exchange through
standardized integration methods.

Imagine a city road system where roads (APIs) connect various locations
(applications, systems, services) efficiently and securely, ensuring smooth transit
(data exchange) for all inhabitants (end users). The end goal is to organize the way
for different applications, systems, and services to connect and communicate with
each other seamlessly in a secure, efficient, and scalable manner.

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Ultimately, the APIs you build are the only way to reach your end users. If you
don’t plan before you start building, you’ll quickly end up with inefficiencies,
redundancies, or even outages.

Your IT teams will waste time maintaining the integrations you built instead of
creating new or reusing APIs to connect to your various systems and applications.
The result? Your end users’ experiences will suffer.

Utilize Anypoint Exchange for universal connectivity

At the core of MuleSoft’s universal connectivity vision and services is Anypoint
Exchange, a centralized hub for sharing and discovering integration assets. Developers
can share their API specs, implementations, integrations, and deployed APIs with full
documentation and access control across their company to promote a culture of reuse
and collaboration.
 Connectors
Connectors are pre-built integration tools that seamlessly connect popular
applications, databases, and APIs.

Implementation templates
Implementation templates serve as blueprints for common integration
patterns and scenarios. They provide a starting point for developers, offer best
practices, and reduce the time it takes to deliver new integrations.

Accelerators
Accelerators are pre-packaged solutions designed to address specific
business challenges or industry needs. They combine connectors, templates,
and best practices to provide a comprehensive solution that can be quickly
deployed and customized.

These three assets ease the burden on IT teams, allowing them to focus less on
developing and managing integrations and empowering them to achieve universal

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connectivity and internal collaboration. Working together to build reusable assets is
key to an organization’s success.

Using building blocks to construct the composable enterprise makes it easy to adopt
new technologies and swap out systems as needed without changing the entire
technology stack.

MuleSoft product highlight

MuleSoft’s Catalog CLI and API Experience Hub make it even easier to share
assets both internally and externally.

Anypoint API Sharing makes it easier to share APIs as low-code connectors

with your business users. This means developers and business users can
collaborate on technology solutions, and IT can empower business users to
build their automations using shared connectors. This extends the power of
the unified platform to the business organization and eases the burden on IT
and development teams.
 3

Part 3: Extend the application network

AI-powered integration
AI is an unrelenting force that has reshaped how businesses approach integration
and automation. MuleSoft stands at the forefront of this evolution and offers two
sides to AI in integration: AI-powered tools to accelerate integration development
and AI to enhance integration experiences through connected systems and better
grounding.

4 Steps to AI success

1 2 3 4
Connect Compose Control Action
Build APIs on a Reuse existing APIs Manage all APIs Take action via API
unified platform to and discover new including LLMs & AI or RPA bot to drive
connect and unlock APIs to compose new models to protect outcomes across
data necessary for AI applications and sensitive information relevant systems and
effective AI. interfaces. and control access & channels.
usage.

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AI-powered tools for integration development
At the heart of MuleSoft’s approach to AI-powered development is the
integration of AI into traditional processes, making it easier for businesses
to leverage AI when developing APIs and integrations. Working together
means using a natural language experience, and leveraging the capabilities
of generative AI to provide users with an intuitive starting point for creating
integration flows.

Using natural language conversations, developers can swiftly generate

the skeleton of their integration projects, significantly reducing the initial
complexity and time investment. This AI-enhanced guidance streamlines
the development process and democratizes access to advanced integration
capabilities, enabling a more comprehensive range of professionals to
contribute to integration projects.
AI-enabled experiences
MuleSoft also enables the direct use of AI in integrations and APIs to help
create AI-driven customer experiences. Furthermore, our expansive library of
connectors is a cornerstone of this acceleration, which plays a pivotal role in
connecting disparate systems and data sources. This comprehensive collection
ensures that business data can be seamlessly integrated into AI systems
regardless of origin.

Think of a world where all your knowledge about your business and customers
is stored in a single data lake with a unified metadata model. Your AI tools
can leverage this data from this single source of truth to provide accurate and
helpful responses. A support agent can make product recommendations or
help troubleshoot a problem without needing to study the entire product
library, or AI can automatically identify customers who are more likely to buy,
given their browsing and purchase history.

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Data-powered integration
MuleSoft’s approach to data integration addresses the entire data lifecycle, from ingestion
to processing. This holistic methodology consists of three steps and is built on out-of-the-
box connectors.

01. Trigger flows on system changes

Keeping data flows up-to-date with real-time system changes is crucial for
maintaining data accuracy and relevance. MuleSoft uses triggers that detect
file and system modifications to initiate processes as soon as changes occur.
This capability is enhanced by features such as watermarking and custom
Regular Expressions (RegEx), allowing for granular control over which data
changes prompt integration actions. This ensures that data systems are always
synchronized and that only the most pertinent data is processed, maintaining
the integrity and currency of the integrated data.

02. Transform the data with DataWeave

Once data is ingested, the transformation stage begins. With DataWeave,
organizations can map, transform, and normalize data across different formats

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and structures. The DataWeave Playground allows for exploration in a sandbox
environment where developers can model and test their DataWeave scripts. This
secure environment ensures the accuracy and efficiency of data transformations
before they are deployed.

03. Bulk data processing: batch jobs

The final step is implementing batch jobs. These are designed to handle large
volumes of data efficiently and are highly customizable. Batch jobs allow
developers to adjust parameters such as batch size and aggregator size to
optimize the processing workload. This flexibility ensures that large datasets can
be processed in a time-efficient and resource-effective manner.

Through a comprehensive data integration strategy, businesses can manage their data
integration needs from the initial connection to data sources to the sophisticated
processing of large datasets. With this approach, businesses can leverage their data assets
to their fullest potential to drive insights, decisions, and actions that propel them forward
in the digital landscape and adapt to rapid industry changes like AI.
Modernize B2B integrations via EDI and APIs
In your average supply chain ecosystem, suppliers send and receive thousands of
business transactions and communications with their networks of buyers daily to
execute important processes like order placement, inventory confirmations, product
fulfillment, and much more. Beyond order management, suppliers and buyers must
communicate with their transportation and logistics partners to manage shipment and
delivery processes for these orders.

This results in a lot of transaction data from order placement to delivery, all of which
need to be structured and tracked. A composable application network within an
organization makes it easy to add and adjust APIs that can ingest incoming orders or
transactions from partners, process them with internal business logic, and route them
to the correct back-end systems.

Traditionally, these business transactions are exchanged with partners via EDI
(Electronic Data Interchange), the standard for B2B communication. The complexity of
different transactions, data formats, and compliance regulations is difficult to manage
without the format standards that EDI has provided.

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AI-powered composability helps companies innovate faster

Project 1 Project 2 Project 3

Customer Operations Dashboard & B2B/EDI Partner
Mobile App Legacy System Access Portal Experience APIs
B2B/EDI

EDI Transactions Automation

Process Flow

30 %
Document Processor

OMS API OMS API

RPA Bots RPA Bots

Reduction in
Operations API Operations API Operations API integration costs when
building on Anypoint
Orders API Orders API Orders API Platform
API-led Connectivity, 2023

Finance API Finance API Finance API

Although EDI will remain an important part of building a composable partner
ecosystem, businesses are increasingly opting for modern communication methods
such as APIs and document exchanges. This highlights the need for a platform to
handle various types of B2B transactions using different communication methods
and data structures.

MuleSoft Anypoint Partner Manager provides a low-code, configuration-driven

experience that makes it easy to set up your business profile and communicate with
partners across various formats without writing code. It is built with the complex
needs of supply chain management in mind, with a simple interface that allows
enterprises to onboard their partners faster, purpose-built tools that drive efficient
API reuse, and point-and-click business transaction management.

With next-gen transaction monitoring and visibility, and transaction replay

capabilities, MuleSoft enables teams to unlock important business and operational
insights as you collaborate with your business partners.

Power integrations for industry-specific solutions

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Industry-specific technology demands are increasing as organizations are pressed
to adopt interoperability standards, such as FHIR for healthcare and TM Forum for
communications. Anypoint Exchange provides many industry-specific assets:

Industry accelerators
Accelerators package together connectors, APIs, templates, and other
technical assets for a given use case, and they are particularly valuable
for organizations looking to implement complex integrations in a short
timeframe. Imagine taking only days instead of months to connect your patient
data in Salesforce Health Cloud to your healthcare information management
systems, or to automate refund processing for your product returns.

To date, we have Accelerators for specific industries, including financial

services, healthcare and life sciences, retail and consumer goods, and
manufacturing. These accelerators include pre-built integrations to power top
industry initiatives. We also have accelerators for key systems, including SAP
and Commerce Cloud, Service Cloud, and Data Cloud.
In the financial services sector, Accelerators can streamline the integration
of banking systems with Salesforce, enhancing customer experiences
and operational efficiency. And in healthcare, they facilitate the secure
exchange of patient data between systems, improving patient care and
compliance with regulations.

MuleSoft Direct
While accelerators can help jumpstart your integrations, MuleSoft Direct allows
users to simply log in to Salesforce setup and connect with their MuleSoft
Anypoint Platform account. This offers them common industry-specific
integrations that they can enable using clicks, which can be customized on the
back end of Anypoint Platform.

Today, MuleSoft Direct is available for financial services, healthcare,

communications, energy and utilities, consumer goods, media, loyalty
management, automotive, and Manufacturing Cloud. We plan to onboard

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additional Salesforce Clouds in the future.
Conclusion
MuleSoft’s mission has always been to provide a robust suite of tools designed to
streamline the integration of diverse systems, applications, and data across any
cloud or on-premises environment. Today, MuleSoft’s portfolio extends into low-
code tooling for automation, comprehensive API management, and one-click
deployment options for various cloud platforms.

With customer expectations higher than ever, organizations must adopt an agile
and efficient IT estate to meet these expectations. And thanks to AI’s widespread
adoption, things only get more complicated. By establishing a clear integration
strategy, organizations can use APIs to create experiences that will delight
customers.

With MuleSoft’s integration solutions, organizations can easily connect systems and
data to create a connected and agile enterprise equipped with composable building
blocks. This composability is thanks to the power of APIs, which enable businesses
to easily navigate the challenges of digital transformation and pave the way for
innovation, efficiency, and growth.

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What’s next?

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create exceptional customer experiences.
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See the next generation of integration development:
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Discover how MuleSoft’s AI-enabled, cloud-based IDE allows
developers to design, develop, and, deploy APIs, integrations,
and automations — all from a single environment.
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Secure your digital estate with these best practices.

Guide your organization to develop a comprehensive API security
strategy, and demonstrate why your strategy must be developed
as soon as possible.
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Salesforce, the global CRM leader, empowers companies of every size and industry to digitally transform
and create a 360° view of their customers. For more information about Salesforce (NYSE: CRM),
visit Salesforce.com.

Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are
not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase Salesforce
applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available.
Salesforce has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York
Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “CRM”.

For more information please visit Salesforce.com, or call 1-800-No-Software.

MuleSoft is a registered trademark of MuleSoft, inc., a Salesforce company. All other marks are those of
respective owners.