We’ll be discussing the Internet of Things (IoT) during our latest API Tech Talk next Wednesday, May 29 at 9am PDT. Our special guest – Layer 7 Product Architect and IoT expert Holger Reinhardt – will be taking your questions live throughout the stream. And we’ll be sending every single person who gets an IoT-related question answered by Holger one of our nifty new IoT-shirts, for free! You can ask questions through the Livestream chat, using the Twitter hashtag #layer7live or by emailing techtalk@layer7.com.

The Internet of Things is a simple concept: objects being connected to the Internet. What’s not so simple is managing the enormous, almost sublime amount of data these connected “things” (vehicles, appliances…) generate. There’s also the question of how you give people within your organization secure-but-seamless access to specific subsets of data they can actually make use of.  Well, our man Holger knows how it’s done, so start getting your questions together and join our live Q&A on May 29.

Click here to get the full event details and a reminder in your calendar. On the day of the event, join us at:

•   layer7.com/live

And don’t forget, you can ask questions throughout the stream by chatting or tweeting. Alternatively, you can email your questions in advance and Holger will give you an in-depth answer on the day. IoT is a pretty hot topic right now, so this is bound to be a lively discussion. See you next Wednesday!

On Wednesday morning, Layer 7 will be hosting a webinar on How to Choose the Right API Management Solution. There are many solutions that cover one or two aspects of API Management – just a portal or just a Gateway or just access control. However, a truly comprehensive API Management platform needs to provide a broad range of functionality in the management of four distinct areas: identity, developers, interfaces and operations. We’ll delve into each of these areas and discuss what to look for from your solution.

We’ll also talk about the “-ilities” of an API Management platform: scalability, manageability, extensibility etc. We will illustrate each of these with a real-world Layer 7 customer example. You’ll see why these and other non-functional requirements matter just as much as the solution’s technical capabilities.

So, please join me and Layer 7 Product Manager Dana Crane as we discuss these key API Management criteria tomorrow. There will be time for questions – both technical and conceptual – and all attendees will receive a free copy of the recently-published Forrester Wave for API Management Platforms. See you tomorrow!

Register now for How to Choose the Right API Management Solution >>

Advances in commerce are on my mind today for several reasons. First, I am attending the RAMP Advanced Commerce & Mobile Retail Services Summit. Second, Layer 7 just announced an exciting new partnership with Elastic Path, the first commerce platform to unify the commerce experience through a common API access point. And finally, I have noticed a recent surge of demand for Layer 7’s API and identity capabilities to deliver new omni-channel, hyper-local functions to retailers, consumer marketers and payment/credit providers. It’s clear that eCommerce is undergoing a sea change.

Mobile devices and social media have multiplied the number of touch-points available for engaging buyers. The line between retail and “eTail” has grown blurry as location increasingly defines all shopping experiences. Big Data now makes it possible for marketers to tailor promotions to every shopper, based on buying history and inferred intent. And API-driven architectures provide a way to tie all online channels, data sources and cloud services together in an event-driven, context-aware network that can engage buyers wherever they are.

All these elements assembled together suggest a new era of personalized commerce. This will place the buyer back at the center of a commerce universe of disparate data, mobile, cloud and social elements that will converge to deliver him or her a more exact shopping experience tailored to his or her choice preferences at that point in time and that place in space.

For Layer 7, this convergence of trends that puts the shopper at the center of an API-connected ecosystem plays to two particular strengths. Firstly, it leverages Layer 7′s leadership in networking enterprise, mobile, social, cloud and partner services via APIs. Secondly, it cements a concept of enhanced identity, where a fuller user profile can be built around an ID to deliver a more complete view of that subject. Both will be essential for delivering on the vision of highly-personal commerce that spans online channels, is location-aware, leverages multiple data sources and can determine a context-specific action across mobile, payment and Web services.

To learn more, read the API-Driven Omni-Channel Commerce solution brief >>

In case you haven’t heard, we are living in the age of mobile applications and the APIs that power them. Sometimes it’s called the API economy.

Smart phones are ubiquitous, social networks are the norm and we are connected to applications on our devices all the time. We love applications like Instagram, Twitter, Evertnote and Snapchat. But we don’t like signing in and out of each of these applications across networks or devices. It’s awkward and cumbersome and we’re often doing it while on the go or commuting, with only one hand to use while tapping in our passwords. Besides, who wants to remember all those passwords anyway? And it’s not safe to use the same one for every application.

This is the major downside of using all these great new mobile applications. Most of us would gladly invite a scenario where we’d only need to log in once to access multiple applications. There’s social login – but is it safe and is our privacy secure? Remember what happened to Burger King’s Twitter account? Enter Single-Sign-On & OAuth for Mobile Applications.

On Tuesday Feb 26, we’ll be hosting a live interactive Tech Talk on security and Single Sign-On (SSO) for mobile applications. And I’m excited to welcome back Layer 7′s Chief Architect and resident OAuth expert Francois Lascelles. He’ll discuss how to provide SSO for mobile applications, without compromising the security of the apps or the APIs that power them. Francois will also be taking your questions throughout the Tech Talk. So, this will be a great opportunity to get answers to your questions about your own applications and the security that surrounds them.

Click here to get the event details and a reminder in your calendar.

On the day of the event, click here to join:

•   layer7.com/live

Submit your questions:

• Tweet using the tag #Layer7Live
• Email techtalk@layer7.com
• Post a message on Facebook

Right now, a lot of companies are gearing up for Mobile World Congress – and Layer 7 is no exception. I’m attending MWC and I’ll be interested to see how the Internet of Things (IoT) and M2M play out at the conference. IoT has been getting a lot of attention recently, so – in preparation for MWC – let’s take a look at some of the most interesting things that have been said and done in the last couple of months.

I’m particularly excited about a very ambitious EU-funded project to map an IoT reference architecture. Whether it will really become the reference architecture or simply a collection of best practices is subject to debate but I think the simple fact of trying to pull together all the different knowledge domains into one set of documents is bound to be interesting.

Forbes recently published an article by Alex Brisbourne called The Internet of Things Isn’t as New as It Seems. The article offers some really fascinating insights into the renewal rates for built-in 3G services in iPads and OnStar. Reflecting upon my own positive experiences with a 3G Kindle, I have to agree with Alex that, for connected devices to really reach their potential, connectivity must be simply built-in without requiring a separate subscription.

Another indication of this trend is the fact that car manufacturers are apparently switching from built-in mobile connectivity (requiring the owner to carry a subscription) to tethering off the driver’s existing smart phone. This highlights the challenges telco providers are facing – as summarized in a recent blog post on telco2.net.

Alex Bassi has provided another look at the way IoT is affecting business models, making the point that technology is enabling us to use things without having to own them. In my humble opinion, we’ll see this service-based model, which we normally associate with SaaS and the cloud, extending more and more into the domain of physical “smart” things. We can already see this usage pattern emerging in the automotive sector: car sharing a la Zipcar; limo service from Uber; electric car solutions from Better Place. FastCompany calls this the new “self-service” economy in an article that explores these issues in depth.

To get a good overview of the Internet of Things, I suggest heading over to ZDnet, which regularly posts articles on IoT and M2M. Postscapes, meanwhile, is completely dedicated to tracking IoT – I particularly like this site’s (currently incomplete) directory of companies in the space. There’s also a good collection of relevant essays gathered together on Bundlr.

Finally, here are a couple of links for the technically inclined. First here’s a presentation on the impressive set of open source building blocks developed as part of the m2m.eclipse.org project. Second is a piece that touches upon some technical aspects of the semantic Web that have a good deal of relevance to IoT. This is an area I’m personally very interested in and it might be a good topic to explore in a future post.

In any case, I expect to have plenty of interesting things to report on after Mobile World Congress. If you’re attending the show, be sure to stop by the Layer 7 booth for a chat. We’ll be at booth  #8.1A47 in the App Planet zone.