IBM and MuleSoft push towards no-code integration

In the May 2019 release of Mule they have included a new function called flow designer templates. These caught my eye as they are very similar to IBM’s APP Connect Designer flows and show how integration is becoming more accessible to the Line-of-Business.

If we look back at the history of development environments then we see that, back in the late 90’s, IBM’s Message Broker (“APP Connect” aka “IIB”) was one of the first to come out with an integration environment where the developer truly drags and drops the design of their integration flow onto the canvas, as shown below in Figure 1.

Figure 1 A typical APPConnect toolkit flow

With APP Connect toolkit the developer then completes more complex coding of the integration using one of several methods, for example: ESQL (IBM’s designed language) or Java along with more user friendly, visual data mappers.

With this tooling, IBM pretty much set the standard for what a flow designer looks like. Although the programming languages may change, the concept of the creation of a flow in graphical format hasn’t. Everyone from WS02 to MuleSoft, Tibco and Dell Boomi have the same overall concepts and each environment would look reasonably familiar to a developer who’d worked on one of the others.

API-Management

API-Management upped the game slightly. Instead of the developer cranking out flows from nothing but a blank canvas or, at best, some kind of flow template; API-Management gives the developer a leg-up by presenting them with a web UI; this WEB UI walks the developer through the requirements of what the API needs to expose and automatically generates the flows for them. Figure 2 shows an API being “developed” in IBM’s API Connect.

Figure 2 Designing an API in IBM API Connect

Having worked with many API-Managers, I can tell you that each vendor’s API-Management development environment looks and feels very similar to each other.

This is a very business led view on how to create an integration flow but, it’s important to note, that the output of this simplified developer experience is exactly the same as a skilled integration developer could have created with the legacy toolkits.

In the case of IBM, API Connect is creating datapower runtime artifacts. This relationship between the simplified, LoB centric UI and the vendor’s “heritage” gateway is shown in Figure 3 for IBM’s API Connect and Datapower. However, exactly the same goes for Mule and their runtime. In the case of MuleSoft, their API Manager is creating artifacts for their Mule ESB runtime. This is true for nearly all vendor’s API-Managers out their today – they are just putting a veneer over their standard ESB’s.

Figure 3  API Connect configuring Datapower

By presenting this very much simpler, goal driven, Line-of-Business focussed, development interface the developer is being led towards a no-coding approach to creating integration flows. “No code” means less bugs (hopefully😉.

IBM APP Connect designer and Mule design templates

When IBM introduced their new “designer” development environment to APP Connect they raised the bar again, in terms of simplifying the creation of integration flows.

This new design environment doesn’t replace what an APP Connect  developer would term “the toolkit” (aka “the IIB toolkit”) – the original eclipse-based flow-development environment. The new design environment is actually aimed at a different type of developer – one who is more Line-of-Business and doesn’t have the “deep” integration skills that a traditional APP Connect developer does; however, they still want to connect applications together themselves using an intuitive interface.

The APP Connect Designer interface is aimed squarely at integrating the “newer” cloud-based services such as SalesForce to e.g. slack or mailchimp. Figure 4 shows just such an integration.

The important thing to note is that this doesn’t necessarily enable the full range of integration capabilities that a typical APP Connect toolkit developer has at their disposal. However, it can certainly cover-off many of the same scenarios but with a much slicker, and LoB focussed, interface.

Figure 4 Example APPConnect integration

Again, the trend we can see here is towards a no-code approach. Indeed, IBM’s APPConnect designer actually won awards for how intuitive and helpful it is in pushing that no-code development approach.

Mule tackles the same problem

With Mule’s recent announcement of flow designer templates we can see exactly the same Line-of-Business user being targeted and, being targeted with a very similar UI !

Figure 5 MuleSoft's Flow Designer Templates

Mule, just like IBM, are making sure that they have plenty of off-the-shelf patterns to get you started and this all helps the no-code and quick-to-market ethos which is behind these step-changes in the creation of integrations.

The future of integration?

Ultimately, vendors are racing towards an environment that exposes as little code as possible. I’m sure it won’t be long until other vendors catch-up. Personally, I’m not quite sure the market is ready for this level of simplicity just yet. From what I can tell IBM and Mule seem to be solving a problem that most customers don’t think they have as they can find skilled resource for the current tool-sets and understand how to work with the tools. So, I think it will take some time until customers are really pressing for these simpler environments to be the norm.

However, having said that, there is a constant push to low/no-code environments in all walks of computing today. Market pressures are demanding ever-faster time-to-market and more applications with the latest capabilities. The only way that can happen is with less deep-skilled developers and more multi-skilled developers who make less mistakes because they have higher-level tooling. That can only happen with the improved and simplified tooling that IBM and Mule are bringing us with their offerings.