Thanks to the rise of APIs, application integration has become much simpler. Now, those same concepts are being applied more broadly.
At the Riverbed FORCE 2014 conference earlier this month, the company unveiled its Riverbed-Ready Technology Alliance program, which is designed to make it simpler to integrate the company’s Application Performance Platform with other products and services.
Via an API that Riverbed has defined, the company wants to make it easier for partners to build solutions that include a variety of its appliances, said Jerome Noll, director of technology alliances for Riverbed. “We have 2,500 channel partners globally,” Noll said. “Many of them are using APIs to create overlays across the network.
Partners participating in the program will see increased levels of sales engagement, marketing support and solution integration support from Riverbed. Silver partners can test their solutions with Riverbed products, while Gold and Platinum partners have the opportunity for deeper product integration and joint testing, and will receive the Riverbed-Ready Tested logo. Initially, Riverbed said 17 partners have signed up to participate in the program, which includes vendors that sell complementary products and services.
As data center environments become more software-defined, systems of all types can now be invoked via any number of APIs, Charles King, principal analyst for Pund-IT, said. The opportunity for solution providers is to position themselves to manage all that integration, he said.
“Just about everything these days has an API,” King said. “Solution providers have the opportunity to position themselves as experts in managing all that API integration.”
Naturally, solution providers will find themselves mixing and matching various products and services to make custom heterogeneous offerings that they may even brand themselves. As part of that effort, solution provides should take special note of the vendors that make that a whole lot easier to actually accomplish by publishing open and consistently stable APIs.
Michael Vizard has been covering IT issues in the enterprise for 25 years as an editor and columnist for publications such as InfoWorld, eWEEK, Baseline, CRN, ComputerWorld and Digital Review.