Barcelona-based 3Scale Networks is launching its API management service today at the Plugg conference (which is run by TechCrunch editor Robin Wauters). With every Web startup releasing their own APIs as a matter of course these days, 3Scale offers a startups who don’t want to deal with all the hassles of managing their own APIs their own enterprise Web service that does it for them.
3Scale manages signups, tracks usage, offers user forums, stores online documentation, and handles online billing. The service runs on Amazon’s EC2, S3 ,and cloud computing Web services. 3Scale starts charging only once the billing for an API kicks in, which is usually above a certain threshold of free usage. 3Scale was previously in beta. Now companies can host their API management portal on their own sub-domain.
API management service Mashery has come out of stealth mode tonight and is now offering documentation support, community management and access control for companies wishing to offer public or private APIs. This is an exciting launch.
An API, or Application Program Interface, is the interface that allows developers to leverage some one else’s data or functionality to create mashups. The discourse around data sharing and collaboration has largely moved beyond urging companies to offer APIs – now the task at hand is to make the offering of quality APIs easy. That’s what Mashery offers as a service.
Mashery was founded by former Feedster team members Oren Michaels, Kirsten Spoljaric, Clay Loveless and Scott Rafer. Rafer is also the CEO of MyBlogLog (our coverage). The company was incorporated in May and received under $1 million in backing in June. Investors include Josh Kopelman, Jeff Clavier, Rajeev Motwani, Ron Conway, Ariel Poler, Dave McClure, David Rose, and Scott Kurnit. Kopelman, of First Round Capital, is the lead investor and chairman.
The future is going to be built out of APIs – though still controversial in some quarters today, in time they will be as common as corporate web sites are now. Who’s going to build the series of tubes that makes such a future possible? Mashery is aiming to get into that game early.
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