Dive Brief:

• MuleSoft made its debut as a publicly traded company Friday, with shares jumping 46% above its IPO price of $17 per share.

• MuleSoft helps businesses connect different types of software and data through APIs. The company has more than 1,000 customers in 60 countries, including Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Spotify, Unilever and Salesforce. Last year, MuleSoft had $187.7 million in revenue, TechCrunch reports. 

• "Every company is now defined by the software, which is composed of a huge array of applications, data, and devices," said​ MuleSoft CEO Greg Schott in an interview with Fortune. "If you click the order button on a website, it's not just the mobile app, it's the back-end warehouse, the inventory, the shipping system. There are dozens, maybe hundreds of applications in that chain."

Dive Insight:

MuleSoft makes it easy for companies to connect all types of applications, devices and data through APIs, allowing customers to innovate more quickly. Some say this area – often referred to as the integration space – will be the next big enterprise technology.

"MuleSoft’s IPO is a testament to the opportunity and growth demonstrated in the integration space and it will be exciting to see the broader market validate this," said Neha Sampat, CEO and cofounder, Built.io. "I believe conversations around integration will now evolve, and more and more businesses will recognize that APIs are the fabric that makes IoT useful and profitable."

But MuleSoft is not alone in pursuing the integration space. MuleSoft already competes with products and companies like IBM, Tibco, Azuqua, SnapLogic and Zapier, so it’s likely its stock price will soon level off.

This year’s market for tech IPOs is already much strong than last year, when few tech companies entered the public markets and investors were standoffish. But following Snap Inc.'s successful public debut, more companies have followed suit in bids to go public, including Okta and reportedly Cloudera.