GigaOM Pro

Alcatel-Lucent has open-sourced its API management tool, apiGrove, in the hopes of disrupting the market for API management. Layer 7, 3Scale, Apigee, Mashery and many others are going after this opportunity too. In an increasingly connected and collaborative world, APIs are what facilitate the connections between the apps and infrastructure we use. But it means service providers and enterprises have to integrate and manage all the different APIs that are constantly evolving as each app gets updated. Software like apiGrove helps to manage it all. I’ll be curious to see how much traction Alcatel-Lucent gets with apiGrove. Open-sourcing a previously proprietary product isn’t the easiest way to begin an open source project, as it smacks of desperation, but developers will go where the action is. If and it’s a big if, Alcatel-Lucent supports and builds the community, developers will follow.