Content is king – again. After years struggling to regain a foothold under the gale of new Internet technologies, content producers are once again finding their footing. With the popularization of smart TVs, smart-phones and the iPad (the ultimate content consuming device), content has found itself back at the center of the consumers’ entertainment universe.

For content producers, the ability to make content available across devices and through online distribution partners is dependent on opening up the content and associated metadata via APIs. Sometimes these content streams and supporting materials are just opened to select groups of partners. Sometimes this same content is additionally exposed to public app developers, so that they can build the latest and greatest apps around the content.

In either case, because of the explosion in app-driven smart devices and the APIs that connect them, content producers are able to develop new ecosystems, open new revenue streams and build new customer relationships.

That’s why Layer 7 is excited to have been invited to present at the Entertainment Technology Center’s quarterly Mega Session, tomorrow in LA. Coming on the heels of the latest iPad launch, our presentation on new API-driven distribution models couldn’t be more timely.

The 2012 RSA Conference is now over and as many journalists rightly noted this year’s show was as much about opening up the enterprise to the outside as it was about closing the enterprise from the outside. With the acceleration of Cloud adoption and the rapid growth of tablet and smart phone inside the enterprise, the need to manage how information is shared out securely has never been greater. To this end, Layer 7 gave two talks at RSA in addition to two workshops and a sponsorship of Cloud Security Alliance Conference around this general theme.

The two talks given by Layer 7 staff at RSA included one focused on access best practices for APIs called Enterprise Access Control Patterns for REST & Web API and the other focused on the threat implications of Open APIs called Hacking’s Gilded Age — How APIs Will Increase Risk & Chaos. The first was delivered by Layer 7 Director of Solution Engineering Francois Lascelles. The second was delivered by Layer 7 CTO Scott Morrison. For those of you not able to have caught the talks live, we provide the slides below. Enjoy.

This week, at Mobile World Congress, I got to see firsthand how mobile and Cloud are transforming the distribution of content. People want to consume entertainment on four screens: TV, PC, smartphone and tablet. They want their watching, listening, gaming and reading experiences to be 100% portable. They want instant, on-demand access to content. They sometimes want to own the content but they sometimes prefer to rent or subscribe. These changes in how end-users want to consume content are demanding a rethink of how entertainment producers deliver this content.

Cloud and APIs figure prominently in enabling entertainment producers to deliver content anytime, anywhere. APIs allow producers to expose content and associated metadata to “apps” that can be delivered via any smart device, including a TV. Similarly, Cloud computing creates the promise of instant content delivery to any device, on-demand. But for the content producer, exposing content from the Cloud, over APIs, across the Internet, to a mixed universe of internally and externally-built apps that may live on TVs, PCs, tablets or smartphones creates challenges around security and management.

Layer 7 offers solutions for entertainment producers and distributors who need to secure and manage content delivered from the Cloud, over APIs, to apps. That’s why, this Friday, Layer 7 will be exhibiting at the Hollywood IT Summit. If you happen to be attending, stop by the booth or catch Layer 7’s Steve Loscialpo giving a talk called Simplifying Content Distribution Across Mobile & Cloud Using API Management. Here are the event details:

• Hollywood IT Summit – Friday, March 2, 2012
  Pepperdine University, Malibu Campus, Los Angeles – Register here

The ubiquity of mobile devices is something we’ve all become used to in recent years. Still, the remarkable popularity of Apple’s iPad seems to have kicked things up another notch. The whole BYOD phenomenon has finally brought Apple hardware and software into the enterprise. Meanwhile, for many of us, the iPad (or similar tablet product) is becoming the primary means by which we consume content – newspapers, TV, music, you name it!

With new tablets coming on the market and consumers demanding more and more mobile access to content, API management is becoming an increasingly pressing concern for content providers. At Layer 7, we’ve been following these developments closely, while providing API management and security solutions to some big names in content delivery and mobile communications, including Orange.

We’ll be demonstrating our mobile API products at the end of this month, when we set up shop at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (February 27-March 1). This is undoubtedly the big mobile industry event of the year, so it’ll be exciting to be in the thick of things. The fact that it’s happening in a city as spectacular as Barcelona is just the icing on the cake. If you’re lucky enough to be attending, you’ll find us at booth 2.1A79.

Yesterday, we looked at how an enterprise can enable a more mobile, iPad-equipped workforce through secure, scalable API management from Layer 7. Today, it’s time to show something similar for the iPad’s little bro. Our very latest case study focuses on one of the first airlines to roll out an iPhone app.

When the folks at Alaska Airlines decided to stay one step ahead of the competition by replacing their initial iPhone release with a next-generation app combining internal data with information from external sources, they knew they needed an enterprise-level API management solution that could support API composition, caching and advanced security functionality.

And so they came to Layer 7. Find out why…
Read the case study >>