SOA Software Offers API Management via Cloud, Hybrid Environments 
As more enterprises look for ways to safely and reliably expose their APIs to larger developer communities, SOA Software is taking its Atmosphere API management solution to the cloud. IDN speaks with SOA Software CTO Alistair Farquharson about how the cloud will help rocket the importance of APIs – both to developers and to business.
As more enterprises look for ways to safely and reliably expose their APIs to larger developer communities, SOA Software is taking its Atmosphere API management solution to the cloud. IDN speaks with SOA Software CTO Alistair Farquharson about how the cloud will help rocket the importance of APIs – both to developers and to business.
SOA Software’s Atmosphere Cloud is a cloud-optimized version of its on-premise ‘behind the firewall” Atmosphere enterprise API management solution launched in June. The company’s latest cloud-based Atmosphere option aims to cut the cost and complexity of an API developer community, and allow more companies to get involved in programs that promote access to their APIs.
IDN speaks with SOA Software CTO Alistair Farquharson about how the cloud will help rocket the importance of APIs – both to developers and to business.
To broaden dev access to APIs, and extend management capabilities to creators and owners of APIs, SOA Software’s Atmosphere Cloud provides elements critical to both devs and enterprises, Farquharson said. Among them:
- Tools to allow APIs to harness applications and access data
- A governance or management layer for authentication, authorization and power to enforce enterprise security policies
- Collaboration support (wikis, blogs, CMS, etc,) to allow devs to communicate with the enterprise API provider, as well as with themselves
- An easily scalable cloud-based infrastructure to avoid the need for huge on-premise investments
- A “hybrid-ready” API management cloud platform, which can be quickly combined with on-premise API-related applications, data and other resources
But, why the growing interest in platform technologies to help enterprises open up their APIs to eager and creative devs? According to Farquharson, it’s because APIs have become way too valuable to a company’s business, not simply to its IT department. Businesses need an environment that makes APIs easy to use by devs. Yet, companies also need a way to monitor and manage for their APIs, he said.
Alistair Farquharson
Chief Technology Officer
SOA Software
“APIs have moved beyond simply being a technical resource for devs. They are becoming a crucial new channel for business, and enable valuable applications for financial transactions, mobile payments, gaming payments and customer rewards or incentive programs,” he said.
To illustrate the point, Farquharson makes a simple Internet-age comparison.
In the 1990s, every company needed a website to have an Internet presence. Today, that Internet presence isn’t limited to its website, he said. A business’s Internet presence is also to be found in its APIs,
For anyone who doubts the how APIs are growing in value to business, Farquharson shared some eye-popping statistics. At least one-third of eBay’s traffic comes from APIs, about half (50%) of all Salesforce.com’s traffic comes through its APIs, and at Twitter, APIs account for 75% of its traffic, he said.
Among SOA Software customers, one valuable API use case is to empower B2C and B2B mobility. “We are hearing from customers who want to make their applications mobile device friendly, but SOAP and web services aren’t always the best way because [mobile] devices don’t have a lot of processing capability or [local] message management,” Farquharson said.
This drive to go mobile is prompting customers to focus on making sure their APIs appeal to devs who work with the light-weight technologies mobile devices prefer (JavaScript, JSON, REST, etc). Once they do this API work, customers in turn are asking SOA Software for a safe and secure way to expose and manage those new APIs.
SOA Software’s Atmosphere Cloud:
Expanding Options for API Management
SOA Software’s Atmosphere Cloud provides a cloud-based, full service portal that helps bring API providers and API devs together in unified environment, equipped with collaboration features, as well as tools and best practices for using APIs across design time and provisioning.
At its core, Atmosphere Cloud is designed to help enterprises balance the need to “open” their APIs to developer use, while maintaining control over their access and use, Farquharson said.
“In the large view, we want to allow an enterprise to properly promote and publish their APIs, easily share those APIs with a community of developers, and then securely managed their APIs throughout the lifecycle to launch of the application and beyond,” he told IDN. “Devs also benefit from this API lifecycle treatment, as they receive easy ways to access, test and provision approved applications.”
Atmosphere Cloud also supports crucial testing tasks with a testing sandbox and debug logs that support retesting within the sandbox. API owners can also customize the workflow processes, where even after successful testing, devs connecting to an API need approvals to activate their applications. 
“We know this [move to opening APIs to developers] is a new thing for many enterprises, so with Atmosphere we’re bringing a pre-configured, templated and turnkey process together in one place,” he said. “Atmosphere Cloud lets API providers and developers know just what steps they need to take, how their APIs should be versioned and ways to adjust as they need to.”
Atmosphere Cloud features include: API registration, dev on-boarding, API and app monitoring, quota management and the ability to define and implement security and QoS requirements for any provisioned app through centrally managed policies to ensure consistency between multiple API versions.
One analyst watching the “open API” sector found merit in the SOA Software approach.
“SOA Software has carefully assessed the current API landscape and applied their enterprise expertise to the business of managing APIs,” said Kin Lane, author of the popular blog The API Evangelist and the book The Business of APIs.
Atmosphere Cloud’s API lifecycle approach to management arises from SOA Software’s experience in SOA governance and management. “Based on our experience in enterprise SOA, Atmosphere Cloud looks at the entire API management lifecycle from planning, development, pre-production, production and beyond initial deployment to mange updates and extensions,” Lane said.
With the release of Atmosphere Cloud, the Atmosphere API management platform is available in several forms: a full cloud-based version, an on-premise version and a hybrid mix of both.
“Many of our early customers are using a mix,” Farquharson told IDN. “They like a lot of the control and message handling they get from on-premise, but also like that they can support their own API developer community from the cloud at low cost and in a short time, with hardly any set up.”
