MuleSource Partners Around Open-Source SOA Software

Business Integration Technology

"They try to make a product that can handle absolutely everything. That looks great in a sales demo, and they make simple things simple. But B2B integration isn't simple; it's hard," Domke said. "The attempts to make things simple get in the way when you want to do hard things."

Domke instead opted for the Mule open-source ESB and for support from MuleSource, an emerging vendor that recently launched its first official partner program.

BIT, in St. Louis, Mo., is one of a growing number of solution providers adopting open-source products as core elements in their preferred technology stack -- a trend MuleSource hopes to accelerate and capitalize on.

"Every day, we're finding more and more partners that have embedded Mule in a solution they're bringing to market, where it would have been too expensive to build these types of solutions on top of a proprietary vendor's product," said Mike Lewis, MuleSource's vice president of sales.

MuleSource, a San Francisco company founded last year to provide support services around the open-source Mule software, has so far enlisted around two dozen ISVs, resellers and systems integrators for its partner program.

The tiered program offers VARs margins that company executives say vary from 20 percent to 40 percent. However, with per-transaction sales figures low (one of open-source software's strongest selling points is the relatively inexpensive price tag support subscriptions typically carry), MuleSource executives emphasize that their software's primary economic benefit to solution providers is in freeing up more customer dollars for spending on services.

That strategy has paid off for EA Technologies, a Miramar, Fla., services firm that partners with MuleSource. EA Technologies historically worked with commercial vendors such as Tibco and WebMethods. Its initial reasons for exploring open-source alternatives were more about flexibility than economics: With commercial products, EA Technologies was locked into one company's product development and support offerings. With open-source products, it can rely on a broader community for software updates and for help addressing problems and pain points.

"We found it very cumbersome and frustrating when we had to deal with support [for commercial products] -- it took time, you'd have to deal with someone overseas, and there wasn't always much responsiveness," said Carlos Diaz, EA Technologies' managing partner. "You're paying a high cost for service that is really sub-par."

Faster, higher-quality support services is what drew EA Technologies to open-source software and to Mule, but the financial fringe benefits have been attractive. The Mule ESB can be downloaded and deployed for free. Support services from MuleSource start at around $14,000 per server, per year -- a fraction of the license and maintenance costs customers would pay for commercial ESBs from vendors like IBM and BEA

"For the cost that we can purchase open-source software, it definitely outweighs what the commercial vendors can offer," Diaz said. "Why not focus those dollars on the services side? It's opened the door for us to introduce new technologies to our clients."

ESBs like Mule are messaging platforms that help orchestrate data exchange among heterogeneous applications linked together in a services-oriented architecture (SOA). BIT used Mule as a component of EME-BI, a messaging system aimed at the publishing industry. EME-BI helps customers involved in the book manufacturing and distribution supply chain exchange purchase orders, invoices, and delivery notifications electronically, reducing the time and cost involved in transmitting such messages.

Open-source software can still be a tricky sell to large enterprises, Domke admitted. "It took a while for us to be comfortable saying we had a strong commitment to the open-source practice," he said. "We have had a number of major, Fortune 200 companies ask questions about who else is using it. There hasn't been a billion-dollar marketing engine around open-source software the way there has been around WebSphere."

When big companies do use open-source products, they often prefer not to publicize the fact. Domke came up with a clever workaround to find the references he needed to reassure his clients: He combed Mule message boards to see what e-mail addresses posters were using.

"In a matter of an hour or two, I found three major corporations, a few major systems integrators and a major government agency, all using Mule but not advertising it," he said. MuleSource's roster of on-the-record customers includes MLB.com, American Airlines, Citibank, GE and Merrill Lynch.

MuleSource, a privately held company, doesn't disclose its annual revenue, but by the end of next year CEO Dave Rosenberg said he expects to see half of the company's sales driven by channel partners.

"We've already exceeded our initial goals for number of partners," he said. "We see a lot of interest. Now, we think the next six months will really be about adoption."