WHITEPAPER

Digital transformation
blueprint
Making integration your
competitive advantage
Table of contents

Section 1: Change is the only constant in today’s

business environment  .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4

Section 2: Understanding digital transformation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6

2.1 Speed of integration is a key factor in digital
transformation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
2.2 Welcome to the application network  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
2.3 Digital maturity is a way of life  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   10

Section 3: Mapping your digital transformation journey  ..   13

3.1 Your digital transformation blueprint .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   14
3.2 Strategy .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   15
3.3 Organization and governance  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   16
3.4 Software development life cycle (SDLC)  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   19
3.5 Discoverability and self-service  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   20
3.6 Operations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   21
3.7 Community and evangelism .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   22

Section 4: Enterprise implications and recommendations  .   24

4.1 Establish a baseline of your digital
transformation maturity  .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   24
4.2 Develop and execute a program .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   24
4.3 Get the incentives right  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   25

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Section 5: MuleSoft: Your partner in digital
transformation  .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   26
5.1 Outcome-based delivery  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   26
5.2 MuleSoft Catalyst  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   28
5.3 Center for Enablement .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   29

About MuleSoft  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   30

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Section 1: Change is the only constant
in today’s business environment

“Transcending these milestones requires

overcoming both technological and cultural
challenges. It also requires enterprises to
recognize the shift to the technology team as
the catalyst for business.”

In today’s competitive landscape, businesses need to make

decisions quickly in order to respond to rapidly changing
customer preferences and nimble competitors; whether it’s a
new business strategy, a new business process, or a new
market offering, businesses are competing on
speed and agility.
The overwhelming majority of today’s business and technology
team leaders understand digital transformation is necessary to
maintain leverage amid constantly changing customer
preferences. They also have a clear picture of their desired end
state — exemplified by leaders like Amazon, which launches
more than 70 new services and features every year at their
annual AWS re:Invent conference, Google, which has set the
golden standard for productization and unveils hundreds of
announcements at Google I/O each year, and Microsoft, which
has revolutionized the enterprise cloud industry with its core
business model and end-to-end hybrid technologies. Digital
enterprises are producing thousands of patents every year.
However, only a small minority have a clear understanding of
the path they need to lead the market.
Many businesses have honed in on the right goals, such as
building a digital platform strategy and API lifecycle
management, for example. However, executing on this
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imperative has stumped even the most experienced executive
leaders. CIOs most often stumble at two milestones in the
digital transformation journey.
The first milestone is aligning their organization behind a
common set of outcomes. The second is building and
implementing their roadmap to generate lasting
business impact.
Transcending these milestones requires overcoming both
technological and cultural challenges. It also requires
enterprises to recognize the shift to the technology team as
the catalyst for business opportunities, not simply the trusted
operator responsible for keeping the lights on.
In our work with more than 1,600 enterprises, we’ve witnessed
the struggle between business goals and technology team
execution. The overwhelming majority of organizations name
digital transformation as a top priority, but they are unclear on
the path to get there.

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Section 2: Understanding
digital transformation

Customer expectations are constantly evolving, and your

business, application, and technology infrastructure must be
built to reflect that. This requires agility, flexibility, and
constant innovation.
Consider the evolution of Netflix. A business that mailed DVDs
to consumers evolved into company that streams
entertainment for a monthly subscription and further
transformed into a business that, today, creates its own
content. Netflix didn’t offer a better selection of films than its
competitor, Blockbuster. Nor did it offer more physical
locations. Instead, Netflix focused on innovation that
continually redefines the way customers experience
entertainment. With a laser-focus on this goal, they have
maintained their competitive advantage with factory
optimization that drives speed and adaptability. In 2010,
Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy, no longer able to compete
with Netflix’s business and technological agility. Netflix’s speed
and quality engine cornered the market and formed a barrier
to entry for new and existing competitors.
This is a well-known case of a business that has made digital
transformation a way of life. Amazon and Google are other
good examples. Each of these businesses embrace the two key
foundational principles of digital transformation that apply to
every enterprise. First, they keep a laser-focus on continually
improving the way customers experience their offerings and
built their technology to reflect customer needs. Second, they
are built and organized for rapid execution in order to deliver
improvements first-to-market.
As Netflix, Amazon, and Google have demonstrated, agility and
speed are everything in today’s digital age. The ability to quickly

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connect new information from applications, data, and devices
and operationalize it across the entire enterprise is key
to achieving both.

2.1 Speed of integration is a key factor in

digital transformation
The rapid growth of software as a service (SaaS) applications
and increasing the number of integration endpoints has
created an urgent need to expose information internally and
externally through digital channels. In fact, the average
business transaction now crosses 35 disparate systems. Digital
transformation comes not from the implementation of any
single technology, but from an architecture that is built for
constant innovation, enabling companies to bring multiple
technologies together again and again to create a compelling
and consistent customer experience — quickly. An
organization’s ability to drive integration in an agile and
responsive way has a direct impact on its ability to drive digital
transformation in an agile and responsive way.
Successful businesses have a foundation that allows them to
quickly integrate new technologies such as cloud, the internet
of things, artificial intelligence, and big data across the entire
enterprise. From there, they are able to adapt and deliver
quickly to stay ahead of customer expectations. For example,
enterprises who have worked with MuleSoft to develop an
integration capability now deliver integrations 64% faster and
lower their cost to maintain integrations by 63%. They also
benefit from increased agility, with improvements in measures
such as time-to-market, IT throughput, change success rate,
and lower OpEx as percentage of revenue.
An integration capability is key to enabling an enterprise to
constantly innovate and rapidly scale. It ties directly to
improvements in business key performance indicators (KPIs)
such as technology team operational expense, variance from
forecasts of business results, time to market, project success,

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employee morale, and turnover. It also increases key IT
performance indicators including rate of reuse, variance from
forecast of technology results, higher degrees of visibility into IT
and business results, higher rates of standards and regulatory
compliance, “tech debt,” staff onboarding time, and
development factory metrics like test coverage, mean time to
resolution, defect escape rate, mean time between failures,
change success rate, resiliency, and throughput.
So how do you get there? Beyond the ability to integrate the
systems they have today, organizations are looking for ways to
help them speed up the development of new integrations and
maintain them as the applications around them change. This
requires a fabric of connectivity across the enterprise, a
concept we explain in the next section.

2.2 Welcome to the application network

With the massive number of applications, data, and devices
that need to be connected in the modern enterprise, and the
incredible amount of time and resources that companies
spend trying to tie everything together, an application network
provides the agility, flexibility, and speed that businesses in
today’s environment urgently need. New applications can be
plugged into the application network as easily as you
plug in a printer.
At the heart of modern integration is a network of application
programming interfaces (APIs). APIs are the messengers that
allow software to talk to software. APIs are the building blocks
that allow your systems, data, and devices to communicate
with one another. While binary API adoption predicts a 10.3%
increase in a enterprise’s market value, building APIs doesn’t
automatically transform an organization.

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Figure 1: The application network

The problem for enterprises is that they are sitting on a pile of

building blocks. True business transformation requires a
platform that enables productized composition, an operating
model that is ingrained in software development life cycle
(SDLC), and a community that is constantly innovating to
extend the value of your network. This is where the application
network comes in. The application network provides an
infrastructure for information exchange and then allows
applications to be “plugged” into the network. Unlike point-to-
point approaches to unlocking data in the enterprise, the
application network is designed for an era where many people
within and outside of an enterprise will be able to access parts
of the network using consumption models that are familiar to
their way of working. This modular, easily pluggable

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infrastructure enables the digital platform by making it easy to
create, change, and monetize new capabilities.
Application networks change the speed of innovation at
enterprises by connecting data, applications, and devices in a
standardized way using APIs. The next time you need access to
data you don’t create another point-to-point connection.
Instead, you create an API to access and connect it. And you do
this for every new project, each time adding a new node to the
network. Consumers, like your employees and partners, can
also discover and use the assets on the network to build new
products, services, and processes. The network then manages
the communication, security, and tracking of your data. It’s this
self-service and reuse that drives agility and enables
innovation at speed.
It’s important to note that an application network is secure by
design. Data running through the network can be tracked
end-to-end, monitored, and analyzed. Its layered governance
model tracks data consumption at every node, providing the
visibility you get across your IT infrastructure to diagnose
problems and solve them quickly to see load patterns. Finally,
application networks are built for change: they are
recomposable, so they bend not break. It empowers
organizations to develop applications that are compatible with
both their existing architecture and infrastructure as well as
their future state.

2.3 Digital maturity is a way of life

Building an application network is an evolution. The more
mature an application network, the more impact it has on a
business. An application network can be as simple as two
applications connected by APIs that enable two systems to
share information. This would be reflective of a very early or
nascent application network. Every new node added to the
network will increase the value of the network because the

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data and capabilities of that node are discoverable and
consumable by others inside and outside network.
Strategic digital transformation depends upon a mature
application network and level of integration. For example, many
businesses want to drive new revenue streams with an API
strategy. But because these businesses categorize APIs as an
“IT infrastructure” they don’t pull the necessary levers to loop in
their product management, go-to-market, sales, or marketing
functions. Doing so requires an organization to institute two
overarching API commandments: treat APIs as products and
encapsulate applications in APIs.

The first commandment: Treat APIs as products

Successful organizations think about these APIs as products.
Once an API has been designed, the initial versions should be
tested with developers in a number of different channels. To
support this and to encourage adoption and reuse, developer
portals need be deployed for easy API discovery and
documentation. As these APIs mature, tracking API
consumption metrics provides important data on the usage of
APIs, which help drive API innovation.

The second commandment: Encapsulate

applications in APIs
To build and scale application networks at speed, successful
organizations take the integration logic out of applications.
Then, they take the code out of it completely — providing
developers with a cohesive set of building blocks, in this case
applications, in which the logic is apparent and easily reusable.
When each of the business apps in the company’s repository fit
together — even when created separately — companies are
able to deliver goods and services as fast as their
digitally-born competitors do.

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A mature application network doesn’t merely expose systems
— it is an interface for information exchange that allows
developers to discover and reuse assets to create new
applications and services. This includes assets both within the
enterprise and in the broader ecosystem. It also requires an
enterprise-wide integration platform. For example, MuleSoft
provides a single cloud-native platform to efficiently integrate
both SaaS and on-premises applications. Digital transformation
also requires a mature strategy, organization and governance,
software development life cycle, discoverability and self-service,
operations, and community, which we will outline in detail in
the next section.

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Section 3: Mapping your digital
transformation journey

“At the core is the idea that people should

design for themselves their own houses,
streets, and communities. This idea comes
simply from the observation that most of the
wonderful places of the world were not made
by architects but by the people.”
 Christopher Alexander et al., A Pattern Language

As organizations map their digital transformation journey, they

should first look to the patterns that have been formed as a
result of natural customer behavior. This path often represents
the shortest or most easily navigated route between an origin
and destination and, when observed and analyzed correctly,
can be the key to guiding their successful evolution in
the digital world.
Through our work with more than 1,600 enterprises, we’ve
observed patterns in the way businesses tend to follow along
their digital transformation journey. These concepts apply to
organizations across all industries. We have tested and
validated our methods with customers and created the digital
transformation blueprint below to share learnings from
their best practices.
Businesses with strong digital transformation strategies and
clear goals tend to be most effective in aligning their
organizations to perform. While this may sound intuitive, we’ve
seen many organizations dive head-on into design and
implementation without first agreeing on the broader vision for
the company or aligning to leadership priorities. More often

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than not, these initiatives end up blocked by executives or
stalled due to lack of adoption.
Each of these characteristics are important in relation to one
another. This is where the digital transformation blueprint
comes in, mapping the maturity of an organization’s
characteristics to provide a holistic view of digital
competitiveness and actionable path forward.

3.1 Your digital transformation blueprint

Though there is no one-size-fits-all path to digital
transformation, there is a set of standard characteristics that
effectively all sophisticated enterprises share and common
relationships among those characteristics. With MuleSoft’s
digital transformation blueprint, an enterprise can easily assess
its digital competitiveness and identify the path forward.
The digital transformation blueprint has been instrumental in
helping our most successful customers establish and advance
their application network maturity and integration capabilities.
The blueprint encompasses six key elements:
1. Strategy
2. Organization and governance
3. Software development life cycle (SDLC)
4. Discoverability and self-service
5. Operations
6. Community and evangelism
Let’s take a closer look at the core elements of digital
transformation. It’s important to note that these elements are
listed top to bottom by order of operations, not by priority, in
the digital transformation blueprint.

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 1. Basic 2. Siloed 3. Collaborative 4. Continuously improving 5. Way of life

• No technology team and business • Limited technology team and • Mostly aligned technology team • Aligned technology team and • Aligned technology team and
partnership; no API strategy business partnership with and business partnership with business partnership with a business partnership with an API
some KPIs; fragmented API/ measured KPIs and converging shared API strategy and roadmap strategy and roadmap with shared
• Reactive, siloed
integration approach API/integration strategies KPIs that are refreshed regularly
integration approach • New projects and plans treat
• Default integration approach • Intentional “APIs as products” “APIs as products” as de facto • Intentional, API-led integration
• Non-existent application network
is a few APIs tightly coupled approach emerges as integration approach is the default approach
with custom code integration strategy for all projects
• Tangible and measured
Strategy • Isolated application network • Emergent breadth and depth of application network • Ubiquitous application network
application network breadth and depth breadth and depth that is tied
directly to business outcomes
in an API economy

• No executive sponsorship for • Initial executive sponsor for • Growing executive sponsorship • Broad executive sponsorship for • Executive mandate on API-led
integration discipline integration discipline for integration discipline API-led adoption adoption as a requirement
for transformation
• No recognition or • Informal recognition for reuse • Initial incentive program for reuse • Formalized incentive program
incentives for reuse with no incentives aligned with established • Enterprise-wide incentive program
• Limited governance offering
enterprise reuse goals for API-led and reuse
• No governance or visibility into • Sporadic governance limited visibility across network of
Organization applications and data offering ad hoc visibility into
applications and data
applications and data • Governing mechanism
offering emerging visibility into
• Governing mechanism leverages
application network visibility
and governance application network, including to enable built-in security,
security and compliance compliance, and efficiency

• No architecture: • Traditional architecture: business • Evolving architecture: business • Modern architecture: • Modern API-led architecture
monolithic applications architecture separate from architecture begins to align with aligned business and tailored to support connectivity
technical architecture technical architecture technical architectures across the enterprise
• No standard SDLC methodology
grounded in published
• Documented SDLC (waterfall and • Agile is default; • Scaled, agile SDLC;
• Manual testing to minimal QA principles and guidelines
agile/waterfall hybrid) exceptions for bi-modal IT increasing reusable asset
• Scaled agile SDLC production and consumption
Software • Basic QA automation and
inconsistent reporting on
• Automated testing and reporting
with coverage standards • Automated multifaceted • Automated, multifaceted testing
development functional quality inclusive of NFRs testing and reporting and reporting engrained in the

life cycle (SDLC)

SDLC with complete CI/CD

• Few to no APIs to discover • APIs and integrations • Few APIs and integrations • Growing number of discoverable • All APIs and integrations are easily
are discoverable within are discoverable within a APIs and integrations with a discoverable across the enterprise
• No self-service
isolated repositories central repository central or syndicated repository through cross-domain, tagged
• Culture resists reuse with “not API repositories
• Basic self-service that requires • Emerging self-service to • Intuitive self-service extending to
invented here” mindset
meetings, handoffs, and approvals discover and use assets partners and customers • Intuitive, guided self-service
with asset recommendations
• Culture desires reuse but lacks • Culture promotes reuse in pockets • Culture promotes reuse
for employees,
Discoverability processes to normalize with new projects looking to
leverage existing assets
partners, and customers

and self-service • Culture biased toward reuse so

majority of new project integration
work leverages existing assets

• Legacy and ad hoc infrastructure • Line of business- • Centralized infrastructure • Service-based infrastructure • Infrastructure is coherent to both
specific infrastructure leverages DevOps architecture and business needs
• Manual, reactive troubleshooting • Limited, semi-automated
practices and culture with ubiquitous DevOps culture
• Basic troubleshooting tools troubleshooting tools
• Monitoring and reporting
• Centralized collection of • Integrated, specialized, and
capabilities require • Minimal monitoring and alerting • Basic operational KPIs with
automated troubleshooting tools constantly innovating suite of
significant manual effort requiring some manual effort basic monitoring, alerting,
troubleshooting tools
and logging tools • Established operational KPIs with
Operations advanced monitoring, alerting, • Dynamic operational
and logging tools KPIs through published
multifaceted dashboards

• No evidence of community • Ad hoc and infrequent • Intermittent community activities • Regular internal community • Vibrant internal and external
through activities or artifacts community participation featuring APIs and integrations activities featuring APIs community powering the
supported by in-platform and integrations including application network effect
• No standardized onboarding, • Basic onboarding processes and
content and features business outcomes
enablement, or training initial enablement framework • Enterprise-wide enablement
• Standardized enablement • Federated enablement programs result in widespread
• No communications or awareness • Ad hoc, effort-intensive
program including programs with a roadmap for experimentation-based innovation
of platform success communications and limited
Community awareness of platform success
onboarding and training continued enhancement
• Platform successes are broadly

and evangelism • Formalized cross-team

communications with growing
• Streamlined communications
with broader enterprise-level
and habitually communicated and
celebrated; ubiquitous awareness
awareness of platform success awareness of platform success of platform success

Table 1: The digital transformation blueprint

3.2 Strategy
How does your enterprise think about, model, and develop a
strategy that links API and integration capabilities with business
transformation outcomes and technology?
In today’s digital world, platform businesses — businesses that
create value by facilitating exchanges between people, data,
and devices — haven’t just disrupted traditional business
models, they have shifted the power of the market from the
hands of suppliers to consumers. They do so by tapping into
the exponential value of the network effect — a phenomenon
in which a product or service increases in value with each user

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it adds — to ensure the work they are doing today provides
exponential return in the future.
An organization’s success is now determined by the digital
platform it uses to support its business and the business
model that its platform enables, according to Accenture. This
requires a tight strategic alignment between business and IT
leaders, who should function as partners in determining a
shared set of KPIs that measure API consumption patterns as
they relate to business outcomes, such as which APIs drive
adoption and which APIs generate the highest conversions.
When measured consistently, digital businesses are able to
glean strategic business insights from these KPIs — such as
predictability of transaction patterns and new expansion
opportunities — much faster than traditional businesses have
been able to in the past.
With an aligned business and technology team strategy in
place, the next critical element is a normalized, intentional
API-led approach to integration. This approach emerges once
the practice of managing APIs as products — core business
assets instead of technology team projects — becomes the
default approach for all projects.
The third critical element of a mature digital organization is an
application network with ubiquitous breadth and depth. Tying
the application network strategy directly to business outcomes
allows the organization to tap into the network effect to drive
business value. Each API added to the application network
adds exponential value to the business. As the application
network extends across the business, the business as a whole
benefits from the outcomes.

3.3 Organization and governance

How does your enterprise organize and govern people,
process, and technology to evolve along your digital
transformation journey?

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Digital transformation is not only driven by the adoption of new
technologies; it requires a forward-thinking organizational
approach. Instead of connecting one application to another
and burying that connection, digital transformation requires
organizations to treat each API as an application — one that is
built, managed, and exposed for future use. This concept of
productized APIs, or API-led connectivity, is key to fast and agile
delivery in the market.
Many leaders have found an executive mandate — one that
recognizes and attributes digital transformation to API-led
adoption — to be an important aspect of successfully aligning
their organizations with an API-led approach. The golden
standard is the Bezos Mandate of 2002 that fueled the
transformation of Amazon from an online bookstore to one of
the world’s most successful internet companies.
According to Conway’s law, systems reflect the communication
structures of your organization. If your organization’s
infrastructure is rigid or siloed, the products you create likely
will be as well. In the beginning stages of their digital
transformation journey, enterprises are often organized into
teams that can take on projects. In the modern world, these
teams need to shift their focus from short-term project delivery
to long-term product delivery; products that have
interdependent value from other segments of the enterprise.
Similarly, enterprises need to shift their approach from one of
building and managing products to one of cultivating platforms.
Enterprise management teams often struggle to govern their
organization as traditional models are breaking down due to
the significant differences in speed. Teams can make prototype
experiences at unheard of rates, but can’t integrate them with
legacy data sources and enterprise systems that monetize the
value created, As barriers to entry fall across industry, newer
competitors are taking advantage of larger enterprises who can
no longer keep up in the digital world. The very thing that
enabled large enterprises to scale business models (a large

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and robust physical infrastructures combined with enterprise
software that is tightly coupled to custom processes) has
become the anchor holding these enterprises in place and
inhibiting their ability to transform.
When facing these two seemingly disconnected concerns (a
shift from product to platform and the large infrastructure
investments that have now shifted from “barriers to
competitors” to “barriers to competing”), enterprises must now
make the conscious and intentional choice to drive visibility and
interoperability into legacy systems and application
infrastructure. Once unlocked, these foundational systems can
provide two distinct solutions to these existential problems:
1. The necessary real-time transparency of dynamic
operational KPIs through published multifaceted
dashboards. Cultivating a platform of products and
experiences requires a more comprehensive view into the
ecosystem where value is created and consumed.
2. The newly paved on-ramp to the enterprise application
network. Enterprises must, if they hope to compete, create
a new operating model where spinning up new products,
experiences and value streams is no longer weighed down
by the cost and time to integrate with isolated,
non-uniform systems with inflexible processes
Lack of visibility into the applications and data across the
organization can also create a blind spot in the organization’s
data privacy and security enforcement. Additionally, old funding
models that do not invest in the value of API-led and emergent
reuse can cause organizations to leave valuable business
opportunities on the table. Effectively leveraging APIs requires
a distributed emergent governance to provide visibility across
the enterprise and enable efficient API design and
development, enforce compliance and security protocols, and
ensure incentives align to high-value business opportunities by
rewarding API-led adoption and emergent reuse. The beauty of

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an application network is that as organizations adopt API-led
best practices and proliferate reuse, the network itself evolves
into an effective yet decentralized governance mechanism
which doesn’t sacrifice agility and empowerment.
Mature application networks automatically provide visibility
across the organization, which can be leveraged to enable
built-in security, compliance, and efficiency. It also allows
leaders to continually assess their portfolio of application and
data and focus their attention on the areas of high reward.
Once organizations align incentive structures with business
outcomes, they see their people, processes, and technology
fall into place.

3.4 Software development life cycle (SDLC)

How does your enterprise approach and develop architectural
and design activities for business and technical domains?
Deploying an API-first approach requires a flexible, scalable,
and modern architecture that fosters innovation. Trying to
implement an API-first approach on a monolithic or traditional
enterprise architecture will be a slow and costly process that
ultimately won’t move the needle on your business productivity
or competitive stance in the market. True transformation
requires an API-led architecture that is tailored to support
reuse and connectivity across the organization.
The same is true for your approach to development — if you
attempt to build APIs using waterfall methods you’ll be quickly
outpaced by more agile competitors. Executing on your API
strategy requires agile, iterative software development life
cycles (SDLC) on a large scale, such as Scaled Agile Framework
(SAFE) and Scrum of Scrums.
Mature organizations that have mastered digital transformation
have done so with a modern architecture that features a core
integration platform. Their technology teams deploy an
application-development model, which includes automated
multifaceted testing and reporting ingrained in their SDLC, with
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completely continuous integration and continuous delivery that
allows the organization to quickly test and launch new features
and applications. These successful organizations tightly couple
SDLC metrics with project funding to measure and prioritize
projects with the highest business impact.

3.5 Discoverability and self-service

How does your enterprise approach, develop, and deploy
software applications and components?
When developers are able to quickly and easily find and
consume APIs and integrations from projects across the
enterprise, it makes businesses faster and more productive as
a whole. Consider this: with each API a developer creates atop
a system or process, significant time and effort are saved in the
next integration project that requires that system or process.
When created within an application network that multiple
developers have access to, that API can be reused by multiple
developers on multiple projects spanning the entire enterprise.
And when problems arise, or vulnerabilities are surfaced, they
need only be addressed in one place. With each reuse, the
value of this API multiples, resulting in a significant decrease in
operational expenses as a percentage of revenue
for the company.

“When developers are able to quickly and

easily find and consume APIs and integrations
from projects across the enterprise, it makes
businesses faster and more
productive as a whole.”

Unfortunately, many enterprises have traditionally found

resistance to collaboration and reuse among their developer
community. This resistance, termed NIH or “not invented here,”
often stems from a sense of wariness or distrust of the value of
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others’ creations. This resulted from years of building assets
only within projects versus as products that are tested,
documented, and operated so they last, so they’re easy to
service, and, consequently, so others can use them via self-
service. Moreover, there were few, if any, resources to show
how to create reusable APIs and integrations, and promote and
reward their reuse. Finally, without means of controlling who
ends up accessing their APIs, reuse was actually an anti-
pattern, because unfettered access implied unlimited
responsibility and liability in the future. Developers then found
it more straightforward and safer to figure out new integration
projects from scratch, on their own, every time, and at fixed
costs — rather than investing their creativity in
adding new value.
As your application network matures, the ease of discovering
APIs and integrations within your organization will increase,
facilitated through the use of cross-domain API repositories
with tagging. When coupled with guided self-service —
promoted through recommended APIs and integrations —
developers organically lean into collaboration and reuse.
Additionally, teams benefit from the intuitive ability to self-serve
for specific needs. The most sophisticated digital organizations
have a culture that biases toward reuse as developers who are
starting new projects find the majority of the hard lifting
already complete.

3.6 Operations
How does your enterprise approach and manage technology
operations for its applications and components?
Transformation requires businesses to have an infrastructure
that is coherent to the needs of both the architecture and the
business, with DevOps ingrained in the culture. At peak
maturity, application networks are in a state of constant
innovation, producing a steady flow of integrated and
specialized tools in their troubleshooting suite. Observability

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replaces monitoring, alerting, and logging. The network delivers
self-healing features, fixes, and updates frequently and in close
alignment with business objectives.
When organizations reach a dynamic operational state, they
have the distributed systems and observability in place so that
any operator can access and address issues across the
enterprise through published, multifaceted dashboards. Any
team member provisioned with access can log in anywhere in
the network and get a view of the system’s needs that is
tailored to that member’s expertise. For example, when an
infrastructure operator opens the dashboard, he or she will
automatically be looking at a view of the system that highlights
applicable infrastructure issues that need to be addressed.
Developers, architects, and DevOps teams have granular
visibility across various runtimes, APIs, integrations, and other
services, ultimately reducing mean time to resolution,
increasing uptime, and improving data-driven business and
technical intelligence across the business.

3.7 Community and evangelism

How does your enterprise engage top talent to
foster innovation?
For many traditional enterprises, digital transformation
requires a drastic shift in both mindset behavior from one that
shies away from change to one that embraces risk. However,
doing so is mandatory in order to attract and retain top-per-
forming talent. Successful digital businesses like Apple have
created a vibrant internal and external developer community
that fosters creativity and has become one of the most sought-
after technical hubs for top talent.
When an organization builds a community that truly rallies
behind their application network they benefit from increased
productivity, lower rates of project failure, and the sharing of
ideas that lead to new innovations. Organizations can facilitate

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this exchange by engaging the community in activities like
workshops and hackathons.
Additionally, as organizations mature in their digital
transformation journey, the on-ramp to application network
becomes completely automated. Training plans and content
such as API reference, articles, and sample code, which
traditionally required manual updates, are automatically
updated with refreshed assets that are regularly contributed by
community members. At the height of maturity, digital
organizations find broad and habitual communications —
including developer programs and forums — as well as
celebrations of platform successes built into their culture.

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Section 4: Enterprise implications
and recommendations

For many enterprises, the journey to digital transformation is

hazy. In today’s digital world, the sheer number of options and
speed of change is overwhelming — which is why it is so easy
for businesses to veer off course or hit roadblocks along the
way. The steps below help enterprises take the lead on
technology-enabled business transformation and focus on
delivering emerging technologies that support
business strategy.

4.1 Establish a baseline of your digital

transformation maturity
The first step in the digital transformation journey is to assess
the digital maturity of your application network and integration
capabilities. Establishing a baseline will allow you to
understanding critical areas of opportunity and provide a
benchmark to measure success along the way. The digital
transformation blueprint lays out the assessment process,
which can be repeated as necessary to track improvements
and clarify traceable correlations in business and
technology results.

4.2 Develop and execute a program

Multifaceted capability development inside of an enterprise
that is focused on business outcomes requires perseverance
and strategic insight. Initiative and program planning processes
are often based on a “fit for purpose” model where teams and
leaders are recognized and rewarded for meeting specific
delivery goals that center around dates, scope, and quality.
Without a new structure or mechanism that aligns short term
delivery with long term capability improvements, teams often

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follow plans that ritualistically build new siloes or contribute to
those that already exist. Transformational initiatives require a
program that embraces new models and rituals designed to
help autonomous teams adapt to new expectations on
delivering software designed for reuse.

4.3 Get the incentives right

Existing corporate reward systems often incentivize behaviors
that align with the status quo. Creating opportunities to
recognize and reward individuals, leaders, and teams is often
necessary to help employees and managers understand that
the enterprise values efforts that put enterprise goals ahead of
individual goals. Once organizations put the right incentive
structure in place to reward actions that contribute to
transformation, such as API-led integration and reuse, the
people, process, and technology will fall into place. Skewing
towards a multifaceted approach with varying techniques —
such as attachment to compensation incentives, formalized
socialization, and compelling communications that target key
audiences — will gain top down executive support and
bottoms up commitment.

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Section 5: MuleSoft: Your partner
in digital transformation

Digital transformation is a journey. Full transformation requires

a mindset shift in your organization’s people, process, and
technology. The digital transformation blueprint was developed
based on customer insights and research to provide you with a
benchmark and recommendations for how to move forward.
MuleSoft’s technology, business outcomes, and organizational
enablement will enable you to build transformation into the
root of the company to truly transform it from the ground up.

5.1 Outcome-based delivery

MuleSoft’s Outcomes-Based Delivery (OBD) methodology is
used by over 1,600 customers. MuleSoft has proven that
enterprises who focus on developing a highly responsive

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integration capability will reap significant gains in their ability to
practice and demonstrate agility, relative to competitors who
do not. The approach is focused on three pillars: business
outcomes, organizational enablement, and technology delivery.
All three are required for a customer to succeed. Our
methodology includes step-by-step guides within each of the
three pillars for customers to use to drive their success.

Plan for success Establish the Build to scale Measure impact

foundation

Agree on business Monitor and manage Refresh the Measure

outcomes and KPIs business plan business outcomes

Business Develop the overall

outcomes success plan

Define Anypoint Deploy Refine and scale Measure Anypoint

Platform vision Anypoint Platform Anypoint Platform Platform KPIs
and roadmap

Design Anypoint
Platform
architecture and
implementation plan
Technology
delivery Prioritize IT projects Define reference Onboard additional Measure project KPIs
and quick wins architecture project teams

Staff and Launch Launch

onboard the initial projects additional projects
project teams and quick wins

Assess integration Build and publish Drive consumption Measure C4E KPIs
capabilities foundational assets

Establish the C4E Evangelize

operating model

Onboard MuleSoft Staff, train, and Monitor Measure

launch team Anypoint Platform support KPIs

Determine the Publish support

Org internal support guidance and self-
enablement operating model serve materials

Agree on initial roles Develop the broader Update training plan Conduct
training plan skills assessment

Train the Launch experiential

initial team(s) learning
opportunities

Table 2: MuleSoft’s Outcomes-Based Delivery (OBD) methodology is focused on three

pillars: business outcomes, organizational enablement, and technology delivery.

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5.2 MuleSoft Catalyst
To achieve business transformation, technology alone is not
enough – the right operating model, organizational structure,
and approach to execution are also critical. MuleSoft Catalyst™
is a set of packaged offerings, including best practices, assets,
services, training, and customer success programs, for
companies that want to unleash the full power of API-led
connectivity. It offers support for core business processes,
including onboarding, scheduling, and a single view of
customers across systems. Access architecture best practices,
drawn from our insights working with industry leaders, to
promote self-service and reuse in your organization. Catalyst
also provides prebuilt API designs and implementations to
unlock core business data across your enterprise.

Catalyst mobilize Catalyst scale

Develop a clear integration strategy and Scale innovation by incrementally building an
identify the value of an API-led approach enterprise platform of pluggable assets for
reuse across your enterprise

Catalyst launch Catalyst optimize

Establish a foundation to drive immediate Measure impact and effectiveness of your
value from Anypoint Platform through people, process, and technology to optimize
organizational enablement and deployment and achieve business outcomes

Figure 2: MuleSoft Catalyst offers best practices, assets, services, training, and customer
success programs.

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5.3 Center for Enablement
Behind every successful transformation is a small faction of bar
raisers, change agents, and cultural ambassadors driving
radical change for technology teams. These are the people who
wake up every morning and ask, “how can I transform IT into a
delivery agent?” At MuleSoft, we work with companies to
establish a Center for Enablement (C4E) — a small cross-
functional team to align technology and business strategy. A
C4E then enables teams across the enterprise to design and
build productized APIs in a decentralized way. This promotes
reuse through an API ecosystem which improves efficiency and
accelerates innovation. With a C4E, our customers realize and
maintain increased productivity, decreased time to market for
new products, and report consistently higher quality of
deliverables and greater enterprise security.

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 30

About MuleSoft

MuleSoft, a Salesforce company

MuleSoft’s mission is to help organizations change and
innovate faster by making it easy to connect the world’s
applications, data, and devices. With its API-led approach to
connectivity, MuleSoft’s market-leading Anypoint Platform™
empowers over 1,600 organizations in approximately 60
countries to build application networks. By unlocking data
across the enterprise with application networks, organizations
can easily deliver new revenue channels, increase operational
efficiency, and create differentiated customer experiences.
For more information, visit mulesoft.com

MuleSoft is a registered trademark of MuleSoft, LLC, a Salesforce company.

All other marks are those of respective owners.