The API is the thing: Apigee raises another $60M

These days, the web is really a web: Applications depend on one another for data and services. Companies increasingly want developers to use their services, and companies like Apigee make that move possible.

No wonder investors keep backing Apigee. Today the company announced $60 million in new funding.

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APIs push and pull information to and from web services to enable applications that are really ecosystems unto themselves. While Apigee does more than just help companies expose, monitor, and manage the use of those APIs — it also provides a backend as a service (BaaS) for building applications and software for analyzing lots of data to predict events like complaints to health insurance companies — it maintains mind share in the business of API management.

And big tech companies have been buying themselves into that business. Intel bought Mashery, and CA Technologies bought Layer7.

Apigee has tacked on new capabilities over the years by making acquisitions. Predictive analytics is becoming part of Apigee through the InsightsOne acquisition. And Apigee planned telecom-focused API services after acquiring mobile carrier billing technology from the Wholesale Applications Community, or WAC. Usergrid and Instaops buys had similar effects.

Perhaps Apigee will consider buying competitors in the API management business, like 3scale, which raised $4.2 million about a year ago. Then again, 3scale has been holding its own, having increased its customer count from 180 to 400 in the past year, 3scale cofounder and chief executive Steve Willmott told VentureBeat via email.

Overall, Willmott wrote, the API market is hot. “The big change is that APIs are becoming much more mainstream,” he wrote.

Investors in today’s funding round for Apigee include Pine River Capital Management, Wellington Management Co. Bay Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, SAP Ventures, and Third Point LLC. Funds managed by Accenture, BlackRock, and Focus Ventures also contributed.

San Jose-based Apigee started in 2004 and has now raised $171 million, including the $35 million round the company announced last year. Customers include Burberry, Citrix, Dell, eBay, Pearson, Sears, Thomson Reuters, and Walgreens.