This document discusses how SOA Software transformed its existing on-premise SOA management product into an API management platform called Atmosphere in response to market changes. It outlines SOA Software's approach of leveraging its existing runtime technology, building a new API-first product, and becoming its own first customer to prove out the platform's API management capabilities. The new Atmosphere platform supports multiple channels and business models while extending SOA Software's brand to new audiences.

1. API Management
- a Transformation

2. Today’s Audience
• You work for a company and are wondering how to leverage APIs
– How do you create a compelling case for your business?
– How do you go about building an API?
– How do you release it into the wild?
• You are an App Developer
– What does the API do for me?
– Can I trust this API?
• You are one of our competitors
– They are serving beer in the lobby
www.soa.com/atmosphere

3. A Case Study – SOA Software
• SOA Software built its first product in 2002
• Thriving software product business
– Direct Sales to Enterprise
– On premise
• Profitable
www.soa.com/atmosphere

4. Existing Market Landscape
• SOA Management
• Registry/Repository
• Governance
• We saw this market evolve from SOA Management to a
larger, and more complex market over time
www.soa.com/atmosphere

5. Change
• Driving forces for change
– Encroachment on our existing
business model
– Different users and buyers
– A natural evolution for SOA
www.soa.com/atmosphere

6. Emerging Market Landscape
• (Cloud) Integration Brokers/Brokerages – these are the
middle-men, like SOA Software, that are offering value-added
services for hard-earned cash
• API Providers – these are businesses that expose APIs
• App Developers – these are internal groups, partners and
developers
• Typical patterns that we are seeing:
– B2E – business to employee. More and more businesses are
leveraging mobile devices (personal or not) in the workplace
– B2B – the traditional partner integration space with an emphasis
on mobile, devices
– B2D – business to developer. This is a pattern that exploits a
long term consumer-facing strategy
www.soa.com/atmosphere

7. Challenges
• Motivating the business
– Threats do not always translate well to opportunities
• Channel Development
–
–
–
–
Funding
Sales
Support
Profit
• Leveraging existing technology
– Temptation is to throw everything out and start again
– Don’t forget that while technology changes, the problems
largely stay the same
– New requirements: SaaS, Multi-tenancy, UI, Security,
Market and Competitive needs, etc.
www.soa.com/atmosphere

8. Our Approach
• We have a good, scalable, proven SOA runtime technology that
is capable of REST, Mobile, etc.
– An on-premise software product is tough to build and support
– We wanted to leverage this as much as possible. This has years of
QA and works like a charm
• Our management server is targeted for internal use, behind the
firewall by operations and IT.
– We decided to create a new server that leveraged the latest
technologies and met the requirements of SaaS, multi-tenancy and
federation. It is impossible to retrofit these capabilities and we
needed a whole new product.
www.soa.com/atmosphere

9. Our Approach
• We set about designing the API as a
product itself: the ‘Atmosphere Platform
API’
• Since we were building an API
Management platform anyway we could be
our own customer to prove out the
technology
• As an example, we needed the following
API Management Requirements ourselves:
– App and API Discovery – we are an App, we
had an API
– Community Management
– Debugging, Testing, Monitoring
– Security
– Policy Management
– Document Management
www.soa.com/atmosphere

10. Platform Architecture
www.soa.com/atmosphere

11. A new product for a new channel
•
•
•
•
Has both enterprise maturity and the feel of a new product
Is targeted to a new audience
Supports multiple channels
The API allows the product to be deployed as SaaS, on-premise,
and hybrid
• Enables new business models, including federations
www.soa.com/atmosphere

12. Summary
• Start with a compelling business strategy
–
–
–
–
New channels
New markets
New models
Risks and Threats
• Treat your API as a product
– Extend your brand
– Put yourself in the developer’s shoes, think about how they can
make money
• Leverage your API as a platform
– Provides both stickiness and scaling strategy
– Provides technical longevity - as soon as you launch a product, it is
out of date. An API has a longer life.
www.soa.com/atmosphere

13. Thanks…
Alistair Farquharson, CTO, SOA Software
ajf@soa.com
@afarqu
@atmosphere_api
@SOASoftwareInc
www.soa.com/atmosphere