MuleSoft, Inc., which on March 16, announced the pricing of its initial public offering of 13,000,000 shares of its Class A common stock at a public offering price of $17 per share, opened trading the following day with shares rising more than 44%. This, according to industry observers, could put the company on track for one of the best first-day gains of an IPO this year.
MuleSoft provides an integration platform that enables customers to build cloud-native application networks through API-led connectivity. Its Anypoint Platform offers a complete solution for API-led connectivity that creates a seamless application network of apps, data, and devices, both on-premises and in the cloud.
Delivered as a unified integration experience, CloudHub and Mule ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) are built on open source technology to help organizations achieve on-premise and cloud integration while avoiding vendor lock-in.
Commenting on the IPO, industry leaders agreed that this IPO, as well as Talend’s in July 2016, highlights the importance of integration in an increasingly hybrid world.
George Gallegos, CEO of cloud integration platform provider Jitterbit, observed that MuleSoft's IPO speaks to the demand for next-generation connectivity platforms for application developers and coders. "For decades, companies had to rely on legacy middleware products to connect their enterprise data. In today's real-time economy, everyday users and business leaders want to have immediate access to the types of data they need, in the applications they want, when they want them."
While MuleSoft's IPO shines a spotlight on this new reality, Gallegos said he thinks the real momentum is yet to come in the market, as services that work "out of the box" allow business users, and not developers, to more easily and automatically create fast connections between applications and databases.
Chris McNabb, CEO of Dell Boomi, which provides a platform for application and data integration, noted that while he believes that IPOs in the iPaaS category validate the market and are good for all vendors, "many of our competitors struggle with legacy on-premises and frankly old technologies that make it necessary for them and their customers to hire talented and expensive software engineers. “
As all organizations become software organizations, much of what they need to accomplish can be done with low-code, configuration-based platforms, delivering scale, agility and accelerated time to value, he said. Boomi’s technology, along with its recent acquisition of ManyWho, delivers a cloud-native connected workflow capability that provides greater competitive advantage and efficiencies to customers, he added.