Appcelerator acquiring API management startup Singly
Appcelerator is looking to strengthen its enterprise software-as-a-service platform for mobile app development, moving forward by acquiring API management provider Singly.
Singly has developed a portfolio of pre-built API integrations along with its DataFabric layer that serves as a buffer for developers when APIs from third parties change without notice.
The DataFabric product already serves as an abstraction layer for APIs from the likes of LinkedIn, Yammer, PayPal, Dropbox, Google Calendar, Facebook, and Twitter, among others.
Thus, Appcelerator plans to integrate Singly's API management capabilities within its open source development environment Titanium as well as the Appcelerator Platform for building native apps in the cloud.
Appcelerator CEO and co-founder Jeff Haynie explained further in a blog post on Thursday that all of this should provide "a dramatic reduction in the time, complexity, and cost of connecting mobile apps to both public and private services and data sources."
For enterprise customers in particular, Haynie said this should also alleviate some woes surrounding legacy systems:
While there's been a big movement among social and consumer companies to publish APIs for developers to build around, most enterprises are just now waking up to the possibilities. Of course traditional IT has invested millions in building out middleware and SOA infrastructures, and now along comes mobile with a whole new set of needs. Such is life in technology. The good news is that the faster IT can mobilize the data sources, the faster the whole enterprise will see a big uplift in its mobile innovation. All kinds of folks — both inside and outside the enterprise — will start accessing those APIs to do amazing things for the business. With Singly, we help to put IT back in the innovation driver seat, making it much easier to open up backend systems and so accelerating the mobile transformation.
Appcelerator is projecting to completely integrate Singly services by early 2014.
Until then, the Singly team asserted in a separate post that all of its products, prices, and customer support will remain the same — at least for the "next several months."
Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.