API development platform vendor Postman announced on July 19 that it is acquiring privately held API observability vendor Akita Software. Financial terms of the deal are not being publicly disclosed.
Akita's technology helps organizations monitor API traffic and automatically discover APIs. The goal is to integrate Akita into Postman to help organizations discover, document, and monitor all of their APIs in ways they can't do easily today. While APIs are used widely by developers and applications, it's not always easy for organizations to actually be aware of all the APIs in production usage. That's the key challenge that Akita aims to solve.
"Software has become this complex, heterogeneous ecosystem, and the reason for that is really APIs," Jean Yang, founder and CEO of Akita, told ITPro Today.
How Akita Works to Enable API Observability
Yang explained that Akita's software monitors API traffic to automatically discover APIs.
Akita installs an agent in customers' production environments that has permission to watch network traffic. As API calls are made, Akita's algorithms infer information about the API endpoints such as data types, authentication methods, and structures.
Akita then provides insights into the APIs it discovers such as which ones are the most or least called, which ones are slowest, and which ones may be experiencing issues. This helps customers gain visibility into their complex API ecosystems and identify the most important APIs to focus on.
Why Postman Is Acquiring Akira to Improve API Observability
Postman has been helping developers build and manage APIs since the company was founded in 2014.
Over the last decade, Postman has steadily added capabilities that make API workflows easier for developers. With Akita, Postman users will now have better observability and discoverability for APIs.
"In a very low touch way, organizations can now map out their entire API landscape," Abhinav Asthana, CEO of Postman, told ITPro Today.
Many organizations have hundreds or thousands of APIs spread out in various deployments, applications, and environments, he said. Postman has provided various forms of API monitoring, though Asthana noted that organizations are always looking for more visibility.
With the Akita technology, a development team can now map out the entire API landscape and document it, Asthana said. With documentation, organizations can have better control and enable enforcement and governance on API endpoints. He added that organizations will be able to "go from zero to thousands of APIs in a matter of minutes" with the Akita integration into Postman.
About the author
Sean Michael Kerner is an IT consultant, technology enthusiast and tinkerer. He consults to industry and media organizations on technology issues.
