CA Technologies acquires Layer 7, MuleSoft acquires Programmable Web, 3Scale gets funding
It is clear that the API Economy is kicking into gear in a big way. Last week, Intel announced its acquisition of Mashery, this week, CA Technologies announced its acquisition of Layer7 , MuleSoft announced its acquisition of ProgrammableWeb and 3Scale closed a round of funding for 4.2M.
Money is flooding into the API Economy as the importance of APIs only heightens. Expect this trend to continue.
The upside of this flurry of activity is the focus being given to the API Economy.
But here is my assessment.
CA’s acquisition of Layer7 doesn’t necessarily bode well for Layer7 or its customers. CA as a large vendor will probably take longer than Layer 7 would do independently for defining and delivering on the roadmap, but they might put far more power behind such roadmap and its execution. Layer7 needs an upgrade and needs to move to the cloud. CA has a clear Cloud strategy it executes on – look at IAM and Service Management where a large portion of the products is available as cloud service; there is a strong potential for CA putting far more pressure behind the required move of Layer 7 to the cloud. Let’s see what happens there.
MuleSoft’s acquisition of ProgammableWeb is a little weird. John Musser is an independent well-spoken representative of the API Economy. MuleSoft has an agenda with its own platform. Does MuleSoft let Musser continue to be an independent spokesperson? Where does this lead to? All answers unknown.
3Scale gets a round of funding for 4.2M. It plans to add more extensions to the product and grow its international distribution with the funds.
Lots of activity here. Curious to see what happens next.
However, one thing is clear: The API Economy is going mainstream.