Oracle is buying API (application programming interface) management startup Apiary, fleshing out its offerings for this increasingly important area of software. From Oracle's announcement:
Apiary has helped companies create hundreds of thousands of APIs and products that their customers and partners love to use. APIFlow spans the API creation lifecycle, including design, governance, testing, and documentation, while supporting API Blueprint and OpenAPI industry standards. Together, Oracle and Apiary will help companies thrive in the digital economy by comprehensively managing connectivity complexity and API proliferation.
Oracle already has API management capabilities through its Integration Cloud, with which companies can "secure, consume, monetize and analyze APIs," it said in a statement. Where Apiary comes in is as a front-end environment for designing, creating and providing governance over APIs and the combination will create the industry's most complete platform, Oracle said.
APIs are flourishing as a means of connecting legacy applications, cloud software and devices with customers and partners. Apiary's design tools allow for rapid API prototyping and mock testing, while its governance components help users avoid duplicating APIs, set company-wide standards for API development, and avoid code fragmentation through change management tools, Oracle said.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Apiary is on the smaller side, with about 30 employees and having raised just $8.5 million in venture capital. Nonetheless, it boasts an impressive roster of enterprise customers, including Siemens, Viacom, NBC, Bloomberg, Microsoft and United.
The acquisition follows Google's $625 million purchase in September of Apigee, Red Hat's acquisition of 3Scale in June, and Tibco's purchase of Mashery in 2015. Remaining prominent independent API management vendors include Mulesoft, WSO2 and Akana—all of which seem like prime acquisition targets for the likes of IBM, SAP and Microsoft.
While small, Apiary's team is skilled at API design, something that that Oracle hasn't been, says Constellation Research VP and principal analyst Holger Mueller.
Also, indications are that Oracle will retain Apiary as an independent product, rather than fully absorb its capabilities into its broader SOA and Integration clouds—which is a good thing. "API Management needs openness and 3rd-party integration," Mueller says. "Oracle now has a shot at this. APIs are crucial for next-generation applications—they are the endoskeleton of any modern application."
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