More and more businesses are moving applications and data to cloud-based infrastructure. The integration models and vendor offerings that facilitate this are pretty diverse (SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, vCloud, AWS, OpenStack… ) but there is a common thread – the need for APIs with which these services can be managed and maintained.

The importance of APIs continues once the infrastructure is in place. Applications in the cloud can expose their own APIs, opening data access to partners, mobile devices or other cloud technologies. This raises questions around how enterprises can effectively leverage cloud APIs while addressing the security and management concerns that will inevitably arise.

I’ll be discussing some of these concerns when I take part in Layer 7’s latest Tech Talk on Tuesday September 4 at 9am PDT/12pm EDT/5pm BST. The subject matter will be Publishing Cloud APIs and – like all our Tech Talks – this interactive Q&A will be broadcast live on the Layer 7 Facebook page and via Livestream.

Here’s how you can join the conversation:

• Tweet using the hashtag #Layer7Live
• Email techtalk@layer7.com
• Check in & Chat through Facebook

Feel free to ask questions around:

• Securely exposing APIs from a cloud-based solution
• Orchestrating APIs for value-added interfaces
• Enforcing access control and threat protection across hybrid cloud environments

I’m looking forward to chatting with you. Don’t forget to add the Tech Talk to your calendar. See you on Tuesday!

VMworld 2012 kicks off at the Moscone Center in San Francisco this week. At the event, VMware will be making some exciting announcements around the delivery and management of public and private clouds using automation technologies.

Rapid deployment and onboarding has always been a key requirement for Layer 7 solutions, which is what initiated our strong partnership with VMware years ago. These announcements will showcase the next step in that evolution.

Layer 7 will be presenting at the VMworld Solutions Exchange and we’d love for you to stop by to talk about how we take advantage of the latest VMware technology. Come discuss your use case and find out how we can:

• Protect and manage vCloud APIs
• Securely expose APIs from a vCloud-based solution
• Govern infrastructures based on the vCloud Architecture Toolkit (vCAT)
• Orchestrate APIs for value-added interfaces
• Dynamically provision vApps from policy based on SLAs
• Enforce access control and threat protection across hybrid cloud environments

We’ll also be giving demonstrations of our VMware Ready certified products, including the SecureSpan Mobile Access Gateway and Layer 7 API Portal. In case you can’t catch us on the west coast, we’ll also be at the VMware Forum in Toronto on September 20.

Right now, the API is at the center of an incredible amount of technological innovation. Across the Web, through the Cloud and onto your mobile device, APIs power all manner of app-building, integration and virtualization initiatives. For individual users and large enterprises alike, APIs are helping us all make good use of an increasingly diverse range of technological options.

We’ve just added two new pieces of API-related content to our Resource Library: a solution brief called API Management for Content Providers and a white paper called Using Layer 7’s API Gateway for vCloud Architectures. The solution brief explores how content providers can utilize innovative distribution methods while keeping customer account data secure and controlling how content is shared. The white paper explains how vCloud APIs can be used to securely facilitate automation and management of application infrastructure in the Cloud.

The topics covered by these documents are, in many ways, quite different. There’s a common thread here, though. Today’s enterprises need ways to secure and manage their APIs, whether these APIs are used to deliver TV shows to mobile devices or to manage enterprise applications run in the Cloud. In either case, we’re here to help!

For the fourth year in a row, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison used his Oracle OpenWorld opening address yesterday to showcase his vision for delivering software inside pre-configured and optimized hardware. Much has changed since he first stood on the stage at the Moscone Center in 2008, to introduce Exadata on HP hardware.  While his choice of hardware may no longer be HP, his interest in merging software and hardware into something that delivers more than its constituent parts has not diminished.

Now some will snicker that software inside a “pizza box” seems more like a decade-old vision than a foundation for the next ten years. Today, after all, the action is in the Cloud. But it’s never been an either/or situation. Larry Ellison probably knows more about Cloud than most, having funded Cloud pioneer Salesforce.com before launching its primary competitor, NetSuite. So his embrace of appliances doesn’t conflict with the adoption of Cloud. Quite the opposite – modularized software/hardware combinations will become the bedrock for those building Clouds, as evidenced by the EMC-Cisco-VMware joint VCE (Virtual Computing Environment) venture. The accelerated introduction of new appliances this week also demonstrates a larger truth: the enterprise will never be completely in the Cloud.

While the Cloud is great for delivering shared services or consuming specific types of application functionality without IT, it will never 100% replace an organization’s need for traditional software. Despite the whirlwind of innovation in the last 40 years, enterprises rarely replace what isn’t broken. For that reason, mainframes still underpin many of our everyday interactions with banks, insurance companies, travel sites and other enterprise entities.  Moreover, companies will always have the need to own select internal information infrastructure and incrementally add new components to this infrastructure. Appliances for some software tasks let them do this with less cost and complexity.

At Layer 7, for several years now, we have been actively selling appliances to simplify integration, security and governance of applications shared with other applications both inside and outside enterprise boundaries. When we started, these appliances were primarily physical and the sharing was primarily internal. In the intervening years, the sharing has moved outside the DMZ and to apps residing on a mobile tablet like the iPad or in a Cloud like AWS. Moreover, our definition of “appliance” has evolved to reflect changing views of hardware virtualization. Today, we sell more “appliances” on VMware and AWS than we do hardware but the idea remains the same: remove the cost and complexity of application integration, application security and application governance with appliances.  One plus one sometimes can equal three!