dell-boomi-vs-mule-esb

Boomi is a business unit of Dell Technologies, and an enterprise iPaaS. Mule ESB is a Java-based enterprise service bus and the runtime engine of the Anypoint Platform, also an integration platform, from Mulesoft, a division of Salesforce. The solutions are used to integrate data from across different systems, internally or across different business entities, and are competing solutions. As enterprise solutions, Mule ESB (as part of Anypoint Platform) and Dell Boomi are both generally deployed at midsize and larger companies with separate business units and departments or complex or multifarious partner relationships where unification of data is useful.

ESBs in general are not as commonly used as a middleware solution as they used to be given the movement towards the relatively low maintenance iPaaS or other API-based integration solutions. Thus, Mule ESB is not often deployed apart from Anypoint Platform; however it is open source and free (Mule Kernel) without the Anypoint Studio for users willing to edit XML directly without the Anypoint Studio graphic design environment, so it may present an option for some use cases.

Features

Dell Boomi’s cloud-based deployment brings low maintenance overhead, and it tends to be very well-liked particularly by Netsuite users for its out-of-the-box ready connectors, as well as for integrating with SAP, or other popular cloud-based enterprise apps in general. These pre-implemented connectors are numerous and described as very easy to work with and fast to set up. On that theme, its graphical interface with drag-and-drop workflow designer is also well-liked and easy to work with.

Mulesoft states the advantages of an enterprise service bus (ESB) arise when there are multiple applications (3 or more) needing integration, but this is presently truest for on-premise or legacy applications. ESB solutions are less commonly adopted than they were in past years, given the adoption of cloud-based technologies, for which they are less suited.

Limitations

Users cite a number of reasons to use integration technology other than Boomi, or Mulesoft.

One thing to be aware of regarding Mule ESB is that MuleSoft recommends the flagship Anypoint Platform instead as an enterprise solution. Mule ESB is a tool for limited use cases, and primarily excels with on-prem or legacy apps.

While Boomi’s GUI is liked, some say the easy interface can mask poor design, and it may be a less than ideal when complex code is needed to form integrations, or when parallel processing or very high performance is required. But the most regular complaint is simply that its price is high.

Pricing

Mule Kernel is licensed under the Common Public Attribution License (CPAL), and free. However, for enterprise data transformation capabilities, a native test suite, and other advanced features, MuleSoft recommends the Mule runtime engine as part of Anypoint, Studio, on the Anypoint Platform, and does not recommend Mule ESB as a standalone solution for most use cases.

Dell Boomi does not publish pricing, but Boomi is available on five service tiers: the Base Edition for SMBs including only standard features, Professional Edition which provides a testing environment and supports advanced workflows, Pro Plus Edition with services enablement (featuring real-time movement of data and transactions), Enterprise Edition supporting parallel processing and with advanced security features, and Enterprise Plus Edition with adds message queueing.