Alcatel-Lucent has done something interesting in the API Gateway space with its latest announcement.
It has open sourced its API Management platform, called apiGrove. So, rather than offering freemium access to an API gateway, it’s taken the route of allowing developers to use apiGrove and do it themselves.
Alca-Lu has done open source projects in the past, for example its SIP application server, but apiGrove has been done professionally, using the advice of companies such as Voxeo Labs.
There are a number of API management platforms available including, but not limited to: 3Scale, Aepona, Alca-Lu, API Axle, Apigee, APISpark, Ericsson, Huawei, IBM, Layer 7, Managed Methods, Mashape, Mashery, Oracle, SOA Software, Webservius, and WSO2. Within this list, the capabilities and business focus varies widely.
There is currently no clear taxonomy for this space, [but] at a high level there are five main functions within the API gateway:
- API Management - core functions of protection, metering and scale;
- Mash-up (also called composition engine) - use one API to call multiple APIs;
- Business Management - business model support;
- Reporting and Analytics - knowing what's gone wrong and why;
- Console - across all functions is the user interface to manage the platform which does have a big impact on the usefulness of a platform, hence I break out as a separate function, as consoles vary greatly across vendors.