SOA Software, a leading provider of API Management solutions, today announced Lifecycle Manager for APIs, the industry’s most robust and scalable end-to-end API development and lifecycle management solution.
Lifecycle Manager governs the development and use of APIs, services and other software assets across an enterprise’s IT environments, providing a clear view into how each fits into that enterprise’s business and technical landscape. By establishing a comprehensive context for assessing existing software assets and guiding the development of new ones, Lifecycle Manager serves to extend an enterprise’s IT capabilities to Web APIs so they’re accessible and usable to an enterprise’s customers and partners. Leveraging a built-in repository, SOA Software Lifecycle Manager for APIs enables management across all the life stages of an API, i.e. from planning and designing to developing, operating, maintaining and retiring the APIs. As organizations move beyond deploying their first APIs, they are realizing that managing this entire API Lifecycle is one of the most important aspects of rolling out a long-term API strategy, whereas some of the existing API management solutions in the market today only focus on the operating and running aspects of an API Lifecycle.
With the addition of Lifecycle Manager for APIs, SOA Software now offers the most comprehensive API Management solution. A complete API Management solution must provide a Developer Portal, API Gateway for security and transformation, Monitoring and Lifecycle Management. SOA Software now provides all these capabilities through a combination of Community Manager, API Gateway and Lifecycle Manager, becoming the first vendor in the industry to provide a complete API Management solution. All components are available in the cloud or on-premise.
“Lifecycle Manager will make management and deployment of Web-based APIs dramatically easier and more consistent,” said Brent Carlson, SVP of SOA Software. “Enterprises are increasingly seeing demands to extend the functionality of their services to mobile devices and through cloud-based offerings. Lifecycle Manager offers a foundation on which an organization can ensure that their entire set of API offerings is truly enterprise-class.”
Lifecycle Manager has prebuilt integration with SOA Software’s API Gateway and Community Manager, thereby supporting both internal and external development communities. In addition, it offers a variety of new features that make identification, management and oversight of APIs and other software assets easier. These include:
• REST API Support: Full SDLC support for REST APIs is incorporated into Lifecycle Manager, giving customers a single place to establish end-to-end governance over REST-based services and APIs.
• Graphical Template Modeler: In addition to its easy-to-use drag-and-drop governance process editor, Lifecycle Manager now provides graphical editing support for asset content modeling, giving administrators the ability to define and edit asset types via an easy-to-use form-based editor which presents all information relevant to the type under edit within a composite view.
• Subsidiary Asset Types: Lifecycle Manager supports true containment of subsidiary information, ensuring proper information modeling for complex types. For example, an API may contain configuration information defining both sandbox and production proxies as subsidiary types, thereby providing a clearly understandable composite API definition that is in turn propagated to Community Manager for deployment and exposure to external business partners and other potential consumers.
• Graphical Impact Analysis support for IDEs: Browser-based Asset Relationship Visualization (ARV) is now fully integrated into Lifecycle Manager’s Eclipse-based plug-in and Visual Studio add-in.
Powering the API Economy Enterprises are increasingly making business applications available as APIs in order to drive business growth and expose new revenue and partnership opportunities, and ultimately to improve business effectiveness. APIs allow both external and internal developers to build applications that leverage core business capabilities.
SOA Software’s API Management Solution is the most comprehensive on the market today. It is a secure, robust platform that companies can use to share and manage their APIs with the growing app developer community, their partners, and customers. The platform manages, monitors and secures APIs, ensuring that these APIs deliver the level of service customers and partners require; that corporate and customer information and assets are secure; and that the integrity of the corporate brand is protected.
For more information on Lifecycle Manager, see http://www.soa.com/products/lifecycle_manager
Availability
SOA Software Lifecycle Manager is available now.
