Mulesoft alternative for Industrial and asset rich companies

The world is evolving fast and the race to become a Digital Enterprise and a market leader of tomorrow is on. The requirements of the past of integrating systems with batch transfer of data at set and regular intervals is not enough in the modern world where businesses are working hard to become hyperautomated. 

Enterprise Service Bus and iPaaS platforms like Mulesoft are simply becoming obsolete. Only moving and synching data does not meet the requirements of The Digital Enterprise. The bar has been raised.

HyperAutomation requires a new approach

Key New Requirements includes:

• Smart. Intelligent Workflows that can analyze and act on advanced conditions. Incl. AI/ML.
• Hybrid. Run the Workflows anywhere. In the Cloud or on your own infrastructure.
• Easy. Empower Citizen Developers, your normal users at any department
• All Data. IoT, Enterprise, SaaS, Web, Mobile.
• Event driven and real-time. Instant action on Events (new data/changed data) without delays.

Hybrid Architecture for Integration and Automation

The Crosser approach is a Hybrid architecture where the Crosser Node is implemented close to the on-premise system. This brings a number of benefits over cloud-centric integration solutions.

The new ways that will accelerate your Digital Transformation

1. Put the automation workflow in the middle

Older integration platforms like ESB and iPaaS, including Mulesoft, does ETL at best, they transfer and move data between end-points. All logic and workflows then have to be implemented in each end-point system. We believe in a cleaner architecture where the integration hub is smart and all the automation workflows are done in the middle. 

Key benefits with having Intelligent Workflows with streaming analytics capabilities and conditional logic between the systems are:

• One system to master for Intelligent Workflows instead of many
• Faster development of integrations and automations
• Lower cost of integration

2. Run the integrations and automations on-premise

The difference between the Crosser Node and most older iPaaS platforms is that the Crosser Node is not just a gateway that collects and moves data but a full real-time automation engine where the Intelligent Workflows are deployed and all data is therefore processed wherever it makes sense. For companies with legacy systems, that point is on-premise.

Running the Intelligent Workflows locally allows for a direct integration between your on-premise systems and cloud-based systems and applications without having to go between a cloud proxy.

3. Event driven is the new normal

Synching data in batch by polling an API at scheduled intervals is the old way of integrating systems. As both consumers and business users we are becoming accustomed to a real-time world without delays. We have simply come to expect real-time notifications and triggers. Event-driven is the new normal and when possible we recommend leveraging Change Data Capture and events to trigger automations.

4. Leverage multi-path workflows with more systems

If mapping data is all you need then it’s straightforward. But, with Intelligent Workflow capabilities in the middle you can create multi-path workflows. A change in one system can for instance trigger a workflow that updates both the ERP system, creates email notifications based on conditions AND updates a support system. In a single workflow.

With multi-path automation capabilities you can build smart workflows involving multiple systems from a single trigger.  

5. With the Crosser Flow Studio and FlowApps you can empower Citizen users to speed up your digitalisation journey

You likely have many users for your key enterprise and SaaS applications but for each new workflow and automation they want to build they depend on IT specialists and developers to make it happen. IT becomes the bottle-neck which is frustrating for everyone and it slows down the pace of innovation. With the low-code Flow Studio you can empower many of them to build automations themselves using drag and drop and visual workflows.

FlowApps works like templates that gives users a starting point that they only need to adapt instead of building complete workflows from scratch. Let your IT specialists build the most common automations and publish them as FlowApps. 

Find one or several super-users in each business team and empower them to leverage the Crosser Flow studio and your FlowApps to build their own integrations and automations.

6. Explore other data sources and types to build smarter Automations with dynamic, condition based triggers

When you have your common app-to-app integrations and automations in place, consider how you can leverage other data sources and data types to build automations.

There might be use cases where you can have a combination of data from different systems that should trigger an action. Examples:

• IF a CRM field is updated AND a field in the support system contains a certain value, THEN a trigger in your ERP system should be created.
• IF a ERP system field change AND the asset management system contains a certain value, THEN a CRM trigger should be created AND a message should be sent through the communication platform (Slack, Teams, Twilio, SMS etc)

Think about how you can leverage Intelligent Workflows to automate more of your processes. 

The Digitalization Journey is not one project. It is rather hundreds or thousands of mini-processes and use cases that you make digital and automated. 

But moving to the next level to also include all other on-premise systems and SaaS applications and empowering Citizen developers in all business teams to be self-sufficient could have an exponential impact on your business.