The Myth of Reusability on MuleSoft

Part 3 of the Series: IT Leader’s Required Reading – Breaking Down Gartner’s Take on MuleSoft

MuleSoft’s promise of reusable APIs has long been a cornerstone of its API-led integration model – touted as the key to efficiency, consistency, and long-term ROI.

But as Gartner reveals, that promise often falls short.

Too often, teams overengineer APIs with reuse in mind, only to discover that coordination, governance, and version control make reuse more costly than just starting fresh. Instead of accelerating delivery, these well-intentioned architectures slow everything down.

This blog is Part 3 of our four-part series unpacking Gartner’s critical take on MuleSoft – and how modern IT teams are shifting from static API libraries to dynamic, outcome-oriented orchestration.

In this post, we dig into the myth of reusability: why it rarely materializes, how it distracts from true business value, and how Workato takes a pragmatic approach to modular design that works in the real world.

The Reality of Reuse: Coordination, Not Efficiency

MuleSoft’s architectural vision assumes that reusable APIs will reduce development time and increase agility. But the reality is more complex:

• Reuse requires alignment. Changes to a shared API ripple across teams, triggering rework, testing cycles, and cross-team coordination.
• Most APIs are too specific or too broad. Teams either rebuild from scratch or abandon reuse altogether to avoid unnecessary risk.
• Approval bottlenecks slow delivery. As Gartner notes, many developers find it’s faster to create new APIs than navigate MuleSoft’s COE to reuse

Ironically, the more you optimize for reuse, the harder it becomes to move fast.

Wrong Metrics, Wrong Mindset

Measuring reuse volume is like counting keystrokes – it misses the point. Gartner cautions teams to “track the right metrics,” focusing not on API counts or calls, but on outcomes like reduced lead time, faster onboarding, or streamlined compliance.

Reusability should be a byproduct, not the blueprint. When it becomes the goal, teams build for hypothetical futures instead of solving today’s problems.

Unlock the full potential of your integration strategy by focusing on business outcomes, not just technical metrics. Explore how leading enterprises are driving impact faster with an automation-first approach.

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Real World Proof: Monday.com – Efficiency Without Overengineering

When Monday.com set out to automate workflows across HR, finance, and sales ops, they didn’t lead with rigid architectural standards or overbuilt APIs. They chose Workato to help them move fast – with modular, low-code automations designed around outcomes, not infrastructure ideals.

Their impact? Significant. As Lior Zagury, Director of Global IT, put it:

Here’s what that looks like in numbers:

• 270 hours of manual IT work automated every month
• 40% of tickets and 60% of permissions fully automated
• 75% employee onboarding automation success rate

Behind those gains is a model focused on speed, iteration, and business value – not reuse for reuse’s sake. With Workato, Monday.com integrated tools like Salesforce, enriched product usage data, automated recruiting and onboarding, and streamlined quote approvals. The workflows are modular and scalable—but only when it makes sense, not because a framework demands it.

See how Monday.com improved employee experience with Workato’s flexible orchestration.
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Workato: Modularity Without the Overhead

Where MuleSoft enforces reuse through rigid architecture, Workato empowers it through flexibility:

• Modular recipes can be embedded, reused, or repurposed – without the coupling.
• Low-code tools let broader teams safely adapt flows without depending on senior architects.
• Decoupled Runtimes mean new releases don’t break existing workflows, eliminating the need for regression testing, refactoring, and rebuilding APIs with every release.

With Workato, teams don’t have to bet on future reuse to justify what they build today. They focus on business outcomes, and reuse happens naturally—when it actually makes sense.

The Bottom Line

APIs are powerful – but only when they’re used for what they’re best at: exposing functionality, enabling access, and supporting interaction between systems. That’s where they shine.

But when teams try to stretch APIs into universal building blocks for all enterprise automation – especially with reuse as the guiding principle – they run into real-world complexity fast. What starts as clean architecture quickly devolves into:

• API graveyards with limited adoption
• Poor monitoring and governance
• Brittle dependencies that slow down change
• Higher risk with every update

And the promise of reusability? It rarely materializes. Because while reuse may work in small, isolated use cases, enterprise environments are messy. Business logic changes. Ownership shifts. Context matters.

That’s why Workato takes a different approach.

With modular, low-code recipes, Workato makes reusability real – not by enforcing it, but by enabling it. Recipes are business-readable, easy to adapt, and decoupled from rigid architecture. Teams can clone, embed, and evolve workflows with minimal overhead – so reuse becomes a natural outcome, not a forced design constraint.

Three takeaways:

• Let APIs do what APIs do best. Don’t force reuse where it doesn’t make sense.
• Enterprise automation requires flexibility. Reuse fails when complexity is ignored.
• Workato is purpose-built for modularity. Recipes deliver speed and reusability – without the baggage.

Reuse should serve the business—not the other way around.

📘 Further Reading

• Gartner: How to Maximize Value from MuleSoft Deployments
• Unlocking Business Value with Automation and Integration
• Why Decoupled Architecture Outpaces Legacy iPaaS
• Workato: The Role of APIs in Enterprise Automation

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Explore the Full Series:

IT Leader’s Required Reading – Breaking Down Gartner’s Take on MuleSoft

• Part 1: Rethinking MuleSoft’s API-Led Model: Costly Overhead or Strategic Advantage? – Why MuleSoft’s API-led model isn’t right for every integration
• Part 2: Architecture Without Restraint: How Undisciplined API Architecture Leads to Ballooning Costs – Why undisciplined use of architecture leads to high costs for the organization
• Part 3: Why MuleSoft’s Reuse-First Model Rarely Pays Off – Why chasing reuse is often a distraction from real outcomes
• Part 4: The Skills Gap No One Talks About – How talent shortages quietly derail projects