CA Acquires Layer 7 Technologies To Connect Cloud, Mobile And Internet Of Things As API Market Starts To Consolidate

CA Technologies announced this morning that it has acquired API management company Layer 7. It is the second major acquisition of an API management company in the past week, signaling a consolidation of a market that larger companies see as vital for closing the gap between on-premise and online infrastructure and apps. Last week, Intel acquired Mashery for $180 million. The acquisition price for Layer 7 was not disclosed but the Mashery price serves as  a good guide for what CA was ready to pay. CA also announced it is buying Nolio, a company that provides  continuous application delivery. In a press release,  CA said its solution combined with Layer 7 will help organizations to better manage and secure APIs and better deliver applications in the cloud across mobile and web environments. CA said the acquisition will help: Securely enable strategic cloud, mobile and “Internet of Things” initiatives through API security and management Accelerate service delivery and increase profitability by externalizing and monetizing existing application assets that are securely offered via APIs Expand the network of API developers by offering a convenient API development platform that provides all the tools necessary to discover, publish and test APIs Govern API activity in order to enforce SLAs, improve operational performance and monetize big data transactions Secure the externalized API business through authentication, authorization, auditing and threat protection. Layer 7 is considered one of the leaders in the API management space. It competes with Mashery and providers such as Apigee, which remains an independent company. The space also encompasses back-end-as-a-service (BaaS) providers such as Kinvey, Parse and Stackmob. APIs have long been a staple for app developers. With the advent of REST-based APIs, the web and mobile app space boomed, providing the means to  integrate multiple services in one application. With today’s enterprise, the need is to integrate online and on-premise architectures. It becomes important to build a layer around applications that can be connected with APIs  to pull out relevant information that feeds into other systems. That strategy seems to be a part of what makes Layer 7 appealing to CA. The acquisition appears complenentary to the Nolio purchase, which “reinforces the enterprise evolution of DevOps – the confluence of application development and deployment via IT operations”, said 451 Research Senior Analyst Jay Lyman. He goes on to explain “how more enterprise and service-provider customers are implementing automation, continuous deployment and DevOps more broadly.” That puts CA in a spot to provide a next generation of IT

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