Mulesoft Summit Chicago 2017 Recap

This blog posting will be the highlights of the Mulesoft Summit in Chicago

Keynote: How application networks are delivering agility (Why they matter and why now) 

Uri Sarid (Mulesoft CTO) presented the keynote and focused on discussing how the environmental constraints have changed over time and how organizations optimized their internal workings to be effective and ties it all together of how IT organizations are changing again.

1900 -1980 - Monolith Organizations

Environmental Constraints:

• communications - limited
• markets - limited, local and opaque
• logistics - Good 
• consumption - physical / in person 

Organizations optimised for the constraints by trying to control all aspects due to the limited communication and consumption was usually in person.   This was the rise of the monolith organization and Uri highlighted this with Ford Motor company with the Model T very tightly controlled the entire process of production.

1980 - 2000s Supply Chains and Mini-Monoliths

Environmental Constraints:

• Communications - Good
• Markets - Global
• Logistics - Very Good
• Consumption - Remote

Organizations optimised for the constraint changes of this era by beginning to specialize in certain areas.  Uri continued to use the automotive example by highlighting what a bill of materials for a car that now auto manufacturers are using other vendors to build components for the autos and then they are assembling them

Now and Beyond - Hyper Specialization 

Environmental Constraints:

• Communications - Frictionless (Machine to Machine communication)
• Markets - Global
• Logistics - Exceptional
• Consumption - Online

Organizations now are using vendors or products in every facet of the business where they feel they can't get a better end product.  This is crosses all areas of business such as marketing, technology, human resources and others. Uri provided some examples of this hyper specialization as follows:

• Higher Education now has hundreds of specialized vendor offerings
• Blockchain already has over 100 vendors/products since its introduction
• Digital Marketing has over 3,500 firms/products

What does this mean for Enterprise IT?

Uri discusses the IT delivery gap will only accelerate due to shadow IT, Cloud, Mobile, SaaS and IT is expected to bridge this gap with current resources and budget.  Uri also discusses some ways IT can approach the issues such as:

• Work more? Not sustainable (Short cuts are taken)
• Out Source it? - exacerbates the situation (more short cuts)
• Agile / DevOps - Not sufficient to close the gap (These efforts are needed, but won't address the whole delivery gap)

How can Mulesoft help close the IT Delivery Gap?

Uri positioned Mulesoft as the platform that business users will be able to self service their own integrations to specialized vendors and enterprise IT will own (secure the data, secure the communication, provide consistent APIs) to close the delivery gap.  Uri then highlights how Coca-Cola has taken the API approach and have built out an API network where the bottlers built on top of the core Coca-Cola APIs to have a 360 customer view with hooks into social media, logistics APIs and internal information.  Uri really drives home the point that this is not SOA being driven by a controlled team, but by the local teams building and reusing assets for better outcomes.

My thoughts on the Uri's keynote

Listening to Uri I think he is very much in tune with the world today and understands for us that work in IT we need to find ways to embrace the change in the world and harness it to power our enterprises forward or be left without an enterprise.  I also agree that one area that enterprise IT can really power business forward is providing a consistent, secure, reliable API platform to empower our business partners to do more and be protected at the same time.

Mulesoft has provided a previous Keynote where Uri discusses the same material - http://embed.vidyard.com/share/dUokPLimmkHu1Z6SsxeFcg