Blog

Open Source BaaS Project In The European Union

by Kin Lane on 02/12/2013

The Backend as a Service (BaaS) space is picking up momentum in 2013. I’m tracking on 20 BaaS providers, in hopes of better understanding what is being offered in this space. Today I came across an interesting new, open source BaaS platform, being developed in the European Union called OPENi. The project describes itself as: OPENi is a European Union ICT Framework Programme (FP7) Information and communications technology (ICT) Collaborative project. Over the 30 month project duration we aim to deliver an open-source, cloud based platform for integrating mobile services. With a mission to: Our mission is to inspire innovation in the European mobile applications industry, by radically improving the interoperability of cloud-based services and trust in personal cloud storage through the development of a consumer-centric, open source mobile cloud applications platform.... read more.

Tags: BaaS, BaaS, European Union, Mobile, OPENi

The 72 Companies Speaking At API Strategy & Practice

by Kin Lane on 02/12/2013

The API Strategy & Practice Conference is happening next week in NYC. I have had so much fun pulling together the schedule of keynotes, panels, sessions and the talks on the 429 - Too Many Requests stage. The number of requests we've received for sponsoring, speaking and attending has been overhelming. Resulting in a sold out conference, and an amazing lineup of speakers. I was spending some time tidying up the speakers page and sponsor page today, and was so impressed with the companies involved, I had to share. There are 72 companies represented at API Strategy & Practice: I don't know about you, but I'm pretty blown away by the list of companies that will be attendance. I'm stoked we were able to pull together such an awesome lineup. I wish I could publish a list of companies who are attending, because that list would equally blow your mind.... read more.

Tags: API Strategy & Practice, Conference, Event, Speakers

Bringing ETL to the Masses with APIs

by Kin Lane on 02/10/2013

I’m spending a lot of time lately thinking about emerging trends in API usage. One area I’m tracking on, is around companies that are offering simple services that provide interoperability and automation between cloud platforms, using APIs. The best known examples are from companies like If This Then That (IFTTT) and Zapier, who provide end users with simple icon based tools for defining tasks that move data between SaaS platforms. Its tough to define this space, which in enterprise speak is really just Extract Transform Load (ETL), which is historically a process to migrate information between systems in an enterprise, using data sources and web services. But with the popularity of web APIs, we need to rethink ETL in the context of the cloud and update how we approach interoperability between the growing number of API driven platforms. Mike Reich of Seabourne, and I were discussing this last time I was in Washington D. C. , and he currently has a great blog post on rethinking ETL for the API age. If you don’t know Seabourne, they are behind high profile government projects like MyFCC and GovInfo. They have been doing a lot of thinking about how to acquire, process and publish content with APIs.... read more.

Tags: Aggregation, Automation, Etl, Interoperability, Transformation

Which BaaS Pricing Model Is Better?

by Kin Lane on 02/07/2013

I’ve been processing a conversation over at Branch, that was triggered by a story in TechCrunch by Sarah Perez(@sarahintampa) called, “StackMob Ratchets Up The Competition: Makes API Calls Free, Launches A Marketplace For Third-Party Mobile Services”. There are several layers to the convSteersation, the part I’m focusing on is about how BaaS providers are structuring their pricing, in which Sarah Perez writes: StackMob is now making API calls free. This latter news will impact the competitive landscape, which includes startups like Parse, Kinvey and others, all of which have traditionally charged developers as API calls increase alongside an app’s popularity. Making the argument that: Today, developers have to have an understanding of how many API calls they make, and if an app becomes really successful, developers are penalized for that with increased pricing. Sarah quotes StackMob CEO Ty Amell, saying that: “this isn’t really all that fair, explaining that it doesn’t matter to StackMob how many API calls the app makes – the cost to them doesn’t really go up.... read more.

Tags: 3Scale, BaaS, BaaS, Kii, Kinvey, StackMob

White House Announces Round Two of the Presidential Innovation Fellows

by Kin Lane on 02/05/2013

The Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF) program, launched last year, bringing in talented individuals from the private sector, to Washington DC for 6-12 month “tours of duty” in the Federal Government, to develop innovative solutions to our governments most difficult problems. Today the United States CTO Todd Park and CIO Steve VanRoekel announced round two of the Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF) program. The first round of PIF projects included MyUSA (formerly known as MyGov), RFP-EZ, Blue Button, Better Than Cash, and Open Data Initiatives started in August 2012 with 18 inaugural Fellows. I had the pleasure to be invited in October to spend half a day talking to a group of the fellows, and help make sure they had an awareness of the API space, empowering the group to make the biggest impact possible. Last week when I was in DC, I also got to speak with a couple of the fellows as they were finishing up their tour of duty, and beginning to think about what is next.... read more.

Tags: Federal Government, Open Data, White House

Augmenting Popular Platforms With New Features Using APIs

by Kin Lane on 02/05/2013

There is an interesting post on the Parse blog about instaDM, which is a service built using Parse, the BaaS platform, that provides private messaging in the Instagram ecosystem. This is a very interesting approach to externally developing features for another platform or service. I think Parse says it well: Even the hottest new apps, however, aren’t perfect and that’s where clever innovators can fill in the gaps with a great idea. Parse-powered instaDM is one such innovation. On one hand, this approach is a gamble. All Instagram has to do is copy what you've done, put it in the roadmap, and your done. Finished. On the other hand, I think this is a very realistic way of pushing a platform forward, by external developers, using APIs. If an API provider is smart, when you have someone in your ecosystem roll out a valuable feature like this, you invest in their success. Building features that augment web or mobile apps like this demonstrate that API ecosystems offer a lot potential for innovation, and I have to say it is even more interesting that this is being built on Parse--probably a whole other story in itself. I don’t think every idea that comes out of Silicon Valley should be VC size.... read more.

Tags: Direct Messaging, InstaDM, Instagram, parse, Private Messaging

Salesforce Discusses Its Eclipse Plugin Release Approach

by Kin Lane on 02/04/2013

Salesforce talked a little bit about its strategy around the development and release strategy around the Salesforce Eclipse plug-in. Providing a little transparency into how they stagger its API releases as well as waiting to release their Eclipse plug-in, until API release is complete. I’m more interested in this story from an API building block perspective. An eclipse plug-in seems like a building block for only the most mature APIs out there, and especially ones targeting the enterprise. An eclipse plug-in is not for every API, but I think I will add it as a building block to consider. It also seems like something a 3rd party provider could step up and find success with as well, by building a single or suite of Eclipse plug-ins that provide integrated API developer tools across popular or high value web APIs for Eclipse users.... read more.

Tags: Eclipse, Idea, SalesForce

Google Adjusts Adwords API Access Tiers

by Kin Lane on 02/04/2013

Google is adjusting their pricing model for the Adwords API, acknowledging that having a free usage tier is important. Making the API easier to access, while also ensuring a certain QOS. Google has opted to go with two levels of API access: Basic - Basic access is provided by default and allows up to 10,000 operations per day Standard - Standard access is available to qualified developers and has no daily limit on operations With both basic or standard access, there are no charges for AdWords API usage. Google is just looking to maintain quality over which developers can hammer on the API, while acknowledging a free tier allows for experimentation and innovation. All you have to do is apply to be part of the standard level, if you reach limits of basic tier. This is a good model for even a totally open data of free resource APIs. While you want your data and resources to be open, you also want to be able to offer a certain quality of service, and keep infrastructure costs to a minimum.... read more.

Tags: Access, Adwords, Google, Pricing

Open By Default for New Generation of API Integrators

by Kin Lane on 02/03/2013

I did a presentation at the DC API Meetup, when I was in Washington DC last week. My talk was some of my usual material around the history, business and politics of APIs, but included a section on trends, where I covered some of the newer aggregation providers like Singly, BaaS providers like Parse and automation tools like IFTTT. At the end of the meetup, we did a QA panel session, and Javaun Moradi (@javaun), product manager at NPR digital, made a great point about the reliability and stability of this new generation of third party platforms building aggregate, backend, automation or other types of providers who are in turn, dependent on other API providers. Javaun questioned the reliability of this new generation of startups, who are newly funded, most likely not yet profitable, dependent on other APIs, and are most likely going to be acquired later on down the road, or go out of business when funding runs out. Javaun felt that established players like Salesforce and Google are here to stay, you know they aren’t going anywhere--where a new startup has greater potential for service disruption and instability.... read more.

Tags: Geekier, Hallway, Open source, OpenKit, Rules.io, Singly

Deploy and Manage API on Amazon Web Services (AWS)

by Kin Lane on 02/03/2013

For the longest time I would get asked, "Which API service provider should I use to deploy my APIs? ". This was a tough question, because historically the API management providers don't help you deploy your APIs, they only help you manage them. Deploying your APIs was up to you. Generally you already had some sort of internal system that you would use to generate RESTful interfaces or you'd go find your own open source API framework and deploy. Then you'd proxy or connect your API to one of the API service providers. These lines are now blurred by providers like Intel with their enterprise API gateway, and through API deployment resources from 3Scale. 3Scale is investing in open source server technology for NGINX, and blueprints for API deployment using Amazon Web Services. 3Scale recently published a quickstart tutorial on how to deploy an API on Amazon EC2 for Amazon Web Services (AWS), and manage it using 3Scale API management. My favorite part is that everything in this tutorial is completely FREE. A critical element to experimenting with APIs.... read more.

Tags: 3Scale, Amazon Web Services, AWS, NGINX