10 September 2016, USA :
Alphabet Inc’s Google said on Thursday it is acquiring cloud software company Apigee Corp in a deal valued at about $625 million, the tech giant’s latest effort to claim a greater share of the lucrative cloud business.
APIs — the mechanism developers use to interface and integrate with outside apps and services — are vital for how business gets done today in the fast-growing digital and mobile marketplace. They’re the hubs through which companies, partners and customers interact, whether it’s a small business applying online for a loan or a point of sale system sending your warranty information to the manufacturer.
“The addition of Apigee’s API solutions to Google cloud will accelerate our customers’ move to supporting their businesses with high quality digital interactions,” Diane Greene, senior vice president of Google’s cloud business, said in a blog post, referring to application program interface products.
Apigee is already used by hundreds of companies, including Walgreens, AT&T, Bechtel, Burberry, First Data and Live Nation. Walgreens, for example, uses Apigee to manage the APIs that enable an ecosystem of partners and developers building apps using Walgreens APIs, including the Photo Prints API (enabling mobile app developers to include the ability for their app users to print photos at any Walgreens store), and the Prescription API (enabling users to quickly order refills of prescriptions right from their mobile app).
The Apigee deal comes a day after Google and online storage company Box Inc said they would partner to enable Box’s corporate customers to integrate Google’s suite of word processing, spreadsheets and other productivity tools, known as Google Docs.
