MuleSoft Brings Powerful New B2B and EDI Integration Functionality to Anypoint Platform

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Oct 1, 2015) - MuleSoft, the company that makes it easy to connect applications, data and devices, today announced new Anypoint B2B features as part of Anypoint Platform™, including next generation functionality for organizations to address B2B and EDI use cases and transform how they compete through API-led connectivity. The release enables companies to deliver products to market more quickly, increase agility to respond to changing production and supply chain strategies, and improve margins by reducing operational costs.

"We're undergoing transformation from a digital freight business to a technology solutions provider. This means that we need to also transform our B2B connectivity to streamline information sharing between trading partners," said Eric Rempel, CIO, Redwood Logistics. "MuleSoft helps us to do that at maximum productivity levels. Its API-led approach to connectivity enables us to access the right resources faster than before and develop sophisticated data-driven solutions for our clients."

Organizations have approached B2B integration in numerous ways, usually using expensive and complex EDI VANs or building a series of B2B interfaces for each trading partner with a variety of custom rules. The traditional B2B integration tools and hardcoded integration serve as challenges to companies as they scale and are unable to adjust to changes in business requirements. For example, adding new partners, suppliers and distributors to this tightly coupled, complex environment can be time-consuming. It results in slow delivery against strategic initiatives, such as launching a new product or expanding into a new geographical market.

"The accelerated pace of digitally enabled new product introduction and multiplicative complexity of winning, serving, and retaining highly empowered consumers results in intolerable levels of stress on the traditional material of CPG and retail collaboration," according to the April 2015 Forrester Research Inc. 'CPG Brand And Retail Channel Collaboration - From Signaling To Synchrony' report, written by George Lawrie. "Carefully designed robust APIs will help to realize latent value for retailers and CPG manufacturers as they take their place in the knowledge economy."

The new Anypoint B2B release completely modernizes the old set of B2B integration standards by extending Anypoint Platform's API-led connectivity approach to B2B and EDI use cases. API-led connectivity allows organizations to unlock the value of existing systems with APIs and innovate rapidly without losing security or control of critical enterprise data. Using the power of API-led connectivity, organizations can tie together new SaaS and mobile applications with traditional B2B protocols and standards required to connect to partners. Companies can now build reusable services across multiple B2B trading partners and B2B processes on a single connectivity platform. This enables increased agility and decreased time for partner onboarding, while reducing cost and risk.

Anypoint B2B Release Highlights
The new Anypoint B2B features enable organizations to wrap B2B gateways with RESTful APIs and abstract away the complexity of EDI. The release also lets them build discrete microservices to compartmentalize processing logic and re-use across partners, and allows real-time business transactions through event-based workflows. The new features benefits from the full functionality of Anypoint Platform:

Extended support for B2B/EDI message standards

• Human readable schematic representation of EDI message standards
• Validate X12 and EDIFACT B2B/EDI message standards
• Customize validation rules by editing schema (e.g. mandatory vs. optional elements)
• Easily extend and edit each standard (e.g. to incorporate custom segments)
• Transform X12 and EDIFACT B2B/EDI message standards into XML, JSON, CSV, Java objects, and other formats

Extended support for B2B/EDI transport protocols

• Send/receive B2B/EDI messages via B2B/EDI specific transport protocols, such as AS2 (Drummond-certified) and FTPS, in addition to existing Anypoint Platform transports

Full-featured Trading Partner Management (TPM) solution

• Fully integrated into Anypoint Platform
• Partner-specific message profiles and validation rules
• Message logging and search based on message metadata

"Across many industries, the exchange of electronic document B2B messages continues to be the means by which key business processes are transacted. EDI is not going away anytime soon. Anypoint B2B brings API-led connectivity to this traditional B2B integration, and allows organizations to drive innovation in their business by applying a modern connectivity framework to legacy technologies," said Ken Yagen, vice president of products, MuleSoft. "This means that if an organization wanted to create a mobile app, it can expose and share the data from the app through a modern API layer and over traditional EDI protocols out to the partner. The API-led approach enables powerful hybrid connectivity that allows real-time business transactions and more efficient business processes."

Additional Information
Learn more about Anypoint B2B: https://www.mulesoft.com/integration-solutions/b2b-edi-platform

Read the April 2015 Forrester Research Inc. "CPG Brand And Retail Channel Collaboration - From Signaling To Synchrony," referencing how MuleSoft is working with top brands to deliver real-time application, data source and API integration: https://www.mulesoft.com/lp/reports/forrester-cpg-retail-collaboration

About MuleSoft
MuleSoft makes it easy to connect the world's applications, data and devices. MuleSoft's Anypoint Platform™ enables companies to unlock the full potential of their applications and data through API-led connectivity, both on-premises and in the cloud. Organizations in over 60 countries, from emerging companies to Global 500 corporations, use MuleSoft to innovate faster and transform their businesses. https://www.mulesoft.com/

MuleSoft is a registered trademark of MuleSoft, Inc. All other marks are those of respective owners.