Message brokering across different systems, with transactionality and the ability to have fine tuned control over what happens using Java (or other languages), instead of a heavy, proprietary languages. One situation that it doesn't fit very well (as far as I have experienced) is when your workflow requires significant data mapping. While possible when using Java tooling, some other visual data mapping tools in other integration frameworks are easier to work with.
CLEO Integration Cloud is well suited in any environment where you need to move and translate business data from one format to another or multiple other formats. It is very well suited to replace existing EDI systems that are cumbersome, are a lot of work to add new mappings (add customers for example), or where the support is lousy and you are constantly creating support tickets to try to resolve issues. It just works very well and is constantly improving including keeping up to changes made by various services such as Shopify.
Camel has an easy learning curve. It is fairly well documented and there are about 5-6 books on Camel.
There is a large user group and blogs devoted to all things Camel and the developers of Camel provide quick answers and have also been very quick to patch Camel, when bugs are reported.
Camel integrates well with well known frameworks like Spring, and other middleware products like Apache Karaf and Servicemix.
There are over 150 components for the Camel framework that help integrate with diverse software platforms.
A great platform perfectly integrated with the rest of the company's software.
Detailed design with simple and easy access from anywhere to our information.
Multi-location and multi-device access.
We save on hardware, software and maintenance, by minimizing the user's need for powerful equipment and the programs in charge of managing and configuring them, reducing the investment in their acquisition.
Cleo integration is in charge of technical maintenance and updates.
If you are looking for a Java-based open source low cost equivalent to webMethods or Azure Logic Apps, Apache Camel is an excellent choice as it is mature and widely deployed, and included in many vendored Java application servers too such as Redhat JBoss EAP. Apache Camel is lacking on the GUI tooling side compared to commercial products such as webMethods or Azure Logic Apps.
Before choosing a solution, we did a detailed analysis of cost, performance, scaling and support. Cleo checked all the right boxes and we have been very satisfied with our choice.
Very fast time to market in that so many components are available to use immediately.
Error handling mechanisms and patterns of practice are robust and easy to use which in turn has made our application more robust from the start, so fewer bugs.
However, testing and debugging routes is more challenging than working is standard Java so that takes more time (less time than writing the components from scratch).
Most people don't know Camel coming in and many junior developers find it overwhelming and are not enthusiastic to learn it. So finding people that want to develop/maintain it is a challenge.
We have easily improved our EDI tenfold (or more) as far as ease of adding new customers for example
We have saved a ton of money by reducing chargebacks for missing ASNs for example
We have improved customer scorecards where they measure our EDI performance such as one large brand name customer we sell wholesale to who originally scored us around 28% and after implementing CLEO we quickly went to a 96%+ score.
