The hottest IT trends of 2012 are shaping up to be Cloud, mobile and “big data”. The links between API management, Cloud and mobile are clear. The links between API management and big data – a concept that creates capabilities for capturing and analyzing previously unimaginable amounts of unstructured data – are less obvious but no less significant. I see two key areas of synergy…

First of all, in the three-tier architecture of the Web, the line was typically blurry between the presentation and logic tiers and concrete between logic and data. Big data now blurs the line between logic and data. Combine this with the fact that the mobile app development paradigm fragments the presentation platform and it is evident that the API will become the concrete and consistent border in application processing flows. In this context, API management will prove vital in enforcing security, collecting business metrics and normalizing protocols.

Second, big data allows analytics to be performed in the scope of real-time data retrieval. This will create another wave of real-time integration needs in enterprises of every size. More real-time integration means more APIs with higher volumes. The common protocol for exposing big data on the network is REST using either JSON or XML formats. Again, this will mean a greater necessity for API management tools and techniques and a compound benefit in their usage.

Simply put, mobile, Cloud and big data are driving a new era of enterprise IT and API management will provide amplified value for companies embracing these trends.

Layer 7 is proud to be exhibiting at the 2012 Department of Defense Intelligence Information Systems (DoDIIS) Worldwide Conference, which will be taking place in Denver this April 1-4. The show will be focusing on the Defense Intelligence Agency’s goal of unifying defense intelligence infrastructure and information sharing initiatives.

Never before has so much intelligence data been collected and never has the challenge of securely sharing these valuable assets been greater. As new intelligence systems come online, issues inevitably arise around the need to make data and security credentials interoperable between these new systems and existing capabilities.

As the leading provider of secure messaging and security Gateway solutions to the US Federal Intelligence Community, Layer 7 will be at the show, demonstrating its solutions for data and security interoperability within the enterprise and the Cloud. If you’re attending the DoDIIS conference, stop by Booth 917 to see first-hand how you can resolve interoperability and fine-grained access challenges with a Common Criteria EAL 4+ certified solution from Layer 7.

I’m off to London for QCon 2012, the Sixth International Software Development Conference (March 7-9). I am one of the track chairs for this meeting. I’ve just learned that the show is now sold out but there is a waiting list if you haven’t already registered. All indications are that this is going to be an outstanding conference, so if there is any way you can attend, you should make the effort.

I’m hosting a track this Friday, called Industrial-Strength Architecture for Integration & Web Computing. Here’s how I described the track to potential speakers:

The enterprise is demanding more from the Web than ever before. No longer content with simple Web application delivery, the new enterprise Web has become an integration point between mobile devices, browsers, legacy systems and third-party Web apps. It is a difficult balancing act. The new enterprise Web is highly scalable but can also reconcile the different service level expectations across each participant. At its core, it enables agile product delivery while maintaining extreme reliability. In this track, we will study the architectural challenges faced by the enterprise that needs to harness the Web as a rich delivery channel — and highlight the real-world solutions that address these challenges. We will explore the intersection where trends such as virtualization, noSQL, JSON, OAuth, APIs and mobile apps meet. Join us to understand the fine tuning between milliseconds and dollars that can make the difference between wild success and disappointing mediocrity.

I’m fortunate to have a great roster of speakers, including Theo Schlossnagle from Omniti, Paul Fremantle from WSO2, John Davies from Incept5 and finally both Marcus Kern and David Dawson from Mobile Interactive Group.

I’m also going to chair a panel titled Integration at Scale: Lessons Learned from the New Enterprise Web. This one promises to be a very interesting discussion:

The mobile device revolution has upended our traditional view of the World Wide Web. The enterprise Web is now about integration: connecting any device to to any data, reliably and under wildly-fluctuating load. How has this affected Web architecture and what changes in the day-to-day operation of the Web resource? Join us for this panel of senior enterprise architects, each of whom has met the challenge of the new enterprise Web.

The panel line up consists of David Laing from CityIndex, Neels Burger from MoneySuperMarket.com, Neil Pellinacci form Tanzarine Technology and Parand Tony Darugar from Xpenser. Each brings tremendous experience to the panel and bringing them all together is going to make for a lively and informative debate. I’m looking forward to it.

Hope to see you in London!

Increasingly, mobile is one of the major factors driving enterprises to expose their information assets via APIs. With the BYOD movement bringing mobile into the workplace and some forward-thinking enterprises equipping their employees with tablets, there is a growing need for enterprise-level apps that leverage systems and data exposed via APIs.

Of course, allowing enterprise data to be accessed from smart-phones and tablets (via public networks) creates a range of concerns around security and performance. The security risks are clear – perhaps less well understood is the fact that, for apps to perform efficiently, data will need to be filtered and transformed into formats and protocols suitable for mobile.

Layer 7’s new API Management for Mobile solution brief explains how our API Management Suite of products delivers everything enterprises need to address the data security and performance management concerns raised by integrating enterprise assets with mobile devices. To find out more download the solution brief now.

With the advent of APIs in the enterprise comes the need for a new security model. An effective runtime security strategy for the type of open integration environment created by APIs requires the deployment of three intertwined elements – a policy enforcement point, a policy decision point and an attribute service.

Layer 7’s SecureSpan API Proxy fits into this strategy as the policy enforcement point. The API Proxy verifies/authenticates any incoming message before assembling a standard XACML request, which is then sent to the policy decision point. Layer 7 offers easy integration with leading policy decision point technologies from Axiomatics and Radiant Logic.

To help enterprise architects understand how XACML is used for this kind of integration, we’ve been organizing a series of workshops in collaboration with our friends at Axiomatics, Radiant Logic and SailPoint. Coming up, we’ve got events at the Mikrotek Training Facilities in San Francisco, Chicago and New York. Here are the details:

• San Francisco
  February 27, 9am-5pm
  REGISTER NOW
• Chicago
  March 5-6,  9am-5pm
  REGISTER NOW
• New York
  March 8, 9am-5pm
  REGISTER NOW