This week, MuleSource Inc., known for its open source enterprise service bus (ESB) offering, announced a trio of product updates and new offerings. In addition to enhancing the Enterprise version of the company's namesake Mule Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), the vendor debuted a tool for monitoring transactions and a registry. The enhanced lineup now enables MuleSource to embed itself deeper into service-oriented architecture (SOA) deployments.
As the SOA media hype continues to diminish and reporters chase Web 3.0 stories, the real work of investing in, designing, and deploying SOA-based solutions continues to pick up pace. With a more robust product and service portfolio, an updated Web site, and an executive team ready to devote time and resources to marketing and sales, 2008 looks like a strong year for MuleSource.
Other ESB providers will have to ratchet up their own marketing to counter MuleSource's customer list, its source code strategy, and its expanded capabilities. Open source competitors, such as IONA with the integration of its LogicBlaze acquisition (press release is here), will have to compete with Mule to attract community developers to its project.
And with another major open source company acquisition this week (MySQL was acquired by Sun Microsystems; press release here), the continued show of strength by MuleSource will make it an increasing target for a larger vendor that either needs the ESB offering or that simply wants to take out a competitor.
Three for one: A better Enterprise ESB and new tools for managing SOA transactions and components
On Tuesday, MuleSource -- which calls itself "the leading provider of open source service oriented architecture (SOA) infrastructure software" but is mostly know for offering an open source ESB -- officially announced its enhanced and new offerings in a string of press releases. Having set the stage in the previous weeks by prepping reporters and analysts, the company lifted the covers off:
- An update to the for-pay version of Mule ESB. Like many open source companies, MuleSource provides two versions of its flagship product. There is a Community Edition (CE) which is available for free and an Enterprise Edition (EE) that is only available as part of a subscription package. This 1.5 EE-only release includes features like patch management and provisioning support. Other enhancements, such as Apache CFX support, are designed to meet the needs of existing customers or broaden the appeal of the product. [Read the press release here]
How mature is the product, given it has a relatively low version number? It makes sense to look at its release history. At Mule's commercial launch in October of 2006, the vendor pitched Mule 1.3. Mule 1.4 CE shipped officially in April of last year, with this new version shipping roughly eight months later.
Will CE users be left out in the cold in terms of 1.5 enhancements? The company told us that Enterprise features should migrate down to the CE edition over a three to five month period. - The new Saturn for-pay "lightweight business activity monitor (BAM)" product. Like the Mule 1.5 release, Saturn is for subscription costumers only. Originally built to look into transactions to resolve problems, the diagnostic tool is now its own official product as is described as providing "detailed logging and reporting on every transaction that flows through the Mule Enterprise Service Bus." Essentially, it lets users know exactly what is going on in their SOA, and it allows interested parties to dig into failed or flagged transactions to find out what went wrong (e.g., root cause analysis). It carries a 1.o designation, but also a "beta" tag, so it is still a work in progress. [Read the press release here]
- Galaxy, a registry that also serves as a governance platform. Emerging as a CE offering only -- for the time being -- Galaxy is MuleSource's answer to the commercial Systinet offering. For those interested in registries for basic Web service WSDL storage, or for those who want to toe dip into SOA governance, Galaxy is a cheaper alternative to an expensive registry. [Read the press release here]
Note: The Mule ESB is released under the CPAL license (a change form the modified Mozilla license it formerly used). Its tooling in general is not released under the open source license.
As for subscriptions, there are three levels: Silver, Golf, and Platinum. Subscribers receive a MuleSource Enterprise Software License, which includes available indemnity; Mule HQ monitoring tools; maintenance and product updates; tech support, access to a support portal (24x7 is available at the highest, Platinum subscription); and now the Saturn tool (see its subscription tier details page for more information).
Speedy, but without the public boasting
Performance is always a key criteria for enterprise-class software (along with security, management, stability support, and other key attributes), and it becomes a serious issue in an SOA-world in which distributed systems are funneled through central hubs, such as ESBs. Is the update Mule fast? According to the company, it is. But while MuleSource is confident it's software is faster than alternatives, it isn't hawking benchmarks. It relies on customer referrals to help for-pay prospects understand what they might expect in terms of performance.
Since almost every benchmark, particularly those that are not considered "standard," can be gamed to deliver positive results, the idea of relying on word-of-mouth and customer references makes sense. Anyone can claim to have a fast implementation on a specially designed and managed system. Most vendors can't convince customers to tout success if it isn't there. In MuleSource's case, the company feels it has plenty of large, distributed, and perhaps most importantly, production solutions in the market.
Calling new age EAI what it is ... EAI
One of the things we like talking to MuleSource's CEO, Dave Rosenberg, is that he doesn't try and pretend that SOA is not really about integration despite the bad rap that many expensive, proprietary enterprise application integration (EAI) solutions developed. He also isn't pretending this isn't another form of middleware -- another useful term that some in the industry have tried to kill off.
The reality is that SOA is based on critical, well-known computing architectures and technologies. It's a form of distributed computing, it's middleware, and it is an integration solution. The real shift -- and the reason why a new naming convention took hold -- is the industry-wide embrace of open standards as the critical aspect of new solutions and the subsequent reduction in cost of many licensed software components due to competition and the open source offerings. So call it what you will, but ESB solutions and associated tools, such as Saturn and Galaxy, are a new way of doing what IT has always been tasked to do: Create robust, reliable, and secure transaction systems that support business processes.
The MuleSource evolution
So, just what is MuleSource? For those who aren't open source or ESB experts, it's another unfamiliar company wearing the open source mantle and sporting a funny name. But MuleSource has been around in one form or another for awhile. It evolved from an open source project (started in 2003) to a commercial venture (founded in 2006). It offers an open source version of much of its technology, but the company, like many open source and commercial hybrids, pays the bills by charging subscriptions.
A press release last November noted that the Mule ESB had been downloaded more than a million times -- that's up from the 700,000 it reported back in May and the 500,000 it reported in January of last year. CEO Rosenberg called this rate "alarming" -- in a positive but happily amazed tone -- in an interview on techweb's Startup City TV. Of course, this is enterprise-class middleware we are talking about, not iTunes or Firefox Web browser downloads, so the growth rate is not as extreme as the media has come to expect. But it is still impressive, nonetheless.
What about money? Will the company be around in a year? Last May, the company announced it had raised $12.5 million in a Series B funding. This adds to the $4 million in its first round that it raised back in October of the previous year.
Final thoughts
MuleSource has two major hurdles. First, it has to continue to improve and enhance its products to compete with not only similar competitors, but also the massive software houses, such as Oracle and IBM. Second, the company must squeeze profits out of the hybrid commercial-open source model. The trick with this model is that the open source products have to be appealing to users, but the company must reserve some features for the for-pay offerings. The multi-month trickle down approach, combined with enterprise-friendly support features, help create separation, but the company will have to continually both enhance for-pay products and enhance open source software with feature that were previously only for paying customers.
Those caveats aside, organizations looking for ESB solutions -- and now SOA registry and management tools -- should put MuleSource on their watch list, if not test the software in pilots or roll it out at a department-level.
By: Tom Rhinelander
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