Open supply API management platform Gravitee raises $11M

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Open supply API (application programming interface) management platform Gravitee has raised $11 million — the initial VC investment in its seven-year history.

APIs play a pivotal aspect in contemporary software program development, bringing maps to ride-hailing apps, login authentication to banking apps, buyer service to ecommerce apps, and privacy to any app that desires to guard buyer information. Emerging from all this is the API economy, which is powering digital transformation across the spectrum and assisting legacy companies transition from monolithic on-premises software program to the cloud and microservices-based applications.

API management

Companies such as Tide, Auchan, and “several tier 1 enterprise customers” use Gravitee’s core API management item to manage how their APIs are accessed, made, and monitored.

Gravitee exists in a space that contains the likes of Tyk Kong, which not too long ago raised $one hundred million at a $1.4 billion valuation Google-owned Apigee and Mulesoft, which Salesforce snapped up for a cool $6.5 billion 3 years ago.

The worldwide API management industry was pegged at $1.6 billion in 2019, a figure that is anticipated to rise to more than $9 billion inside 4 years. With an open supply foundation and a focus that extends beyond pure API management, Gravitee is striving to set itself apart from the crowd with a more versatile and customizable providing.

“As an open source API platform, Gravitee gives businesses and their developers unprecedented control and transparency over their entire API ecosystem,” Gravitee CEO Rory Blundell told VentureBeat. “APIs are now business-critical, so extensibility is a key consideration for businesses. Fully understanding the code base — and being able to contribute to that open source code to fully align to your business requirements — is a key benefit.”

At the major of the Gravitee tree is Cockpit, a tool for monitoring all Gravitee installations from one centralized dashboard. Beneath that is the open supply API manager, which is accessible beneath a permissive Apache 2. license, and the enterprise edition, which contains a bunch of paid premium features to bring more functionality to the mix. These involve monitoring and alerts safety smarts, such as automated upgrades a visual API designer and a marketplace for added plugins and connectors.

Importantly, Gravitee has also added an open supply identity and access management (IAM) module to its item suite that enables companies to very easily integrate with various recognize providers and customize their application’s sign-in expertise. Blundell says this is made to cement Gravitee’s position as “the only next-generation API platform with both API management and identity and access management.”

This proficiently pits Gravitee against other notable players from the IAM space, such as Auth0, which Okta not too long ago acquired for $6.5 billion, and the open supply option Keycloak. But Blundell does not necessarily see them as direct competitors.

“We have replaced Auth0, Keycloak, and other IAM solutions at some of our customers, so we do compete with them, but this is not our primary market,” he mentioned. “Our access management offering is focused on augmenting API-based experiences with next-gen security — for instance, with built-in facial recognition authentication support.”

In other words, Gravitee desires to differentiate itself from each proprietary and open supply rivals by serving as an all-in-one API management and IAM platform corporations can use to authenticate and authorize customers.

The story so far

Gravitee was founded out of Lille, France in 2014 by 4 cofounders who had been working with French retailers to create API implementation methods. But they quickly realized there wasn’t a sufficiently versatile enterprise-grade open supply API platform for the process.

“The available platforms were hugely expensive, did not have the required features, and were largely based on older technologies,” Blundell explained. “Recognizing the size of the market — and the potential for a genuinely good product — the Gravitee cofounders decided to create Gravitee and build one.”

While all 4 cofounders are nonetheless involved with the corporation, Blundell was brought in last year as the initial employee to not come from a purely engineering background — and he sooner or later went on to replace Nicolas Geraud as CEO.

“Given the broad skill set required to perform the CEO role, the decision was taken to help realize the potential of growth in the business,” Blundell mentioned.

In its seven-year history, Gravitee has managed to attain profitability though totally bootstrapped — so why raise funding now?

“The market is accelerating, and to maximize the vision Gravitee has of being the global category-leader for effortless control of the API ecosystem requires significant investment in engineering, marketing, and sales,” Blundell added.

The company’s series A round was co-led by AlbionVC and Oxx.

Originally appeared on: TheSpuzz