Google announced that it intends to purchase Apigee, an API management platform that went public last year, for $625 million or $17.40 a share.
The company, which helps customers build digital products with open APIs, has an impressive customer list including Walgreens, AT&T, Bechtel, Burberry, First Data and Live Nation.
In a blog post announcing the deal, Diane Greene, Google’s senior vice president in charge of enterprise cloud computing described the product set using Walgreens as an example:
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).
She certainly sees the value of adding an API management tool to her company’s arsenal. “The addition of Apigee’s API solutions to Google cloud will accelerate our customers’ move to supporting their businesses with high quality digital interactions. Apigee will make it much easier for the requisite APIs to be implemented and published with excellence,” Greene wrote in the blog post.
Not only is Google getting the technology and customer base, they are taking an Amazon Web Services customer in the process, a nice bonus.
