SOMERVILLE, Mass. – March 3, 2015 – SmartBear Software, the choice of more than two million software professionals for building and delivering the world’s best applications, has created the SmartBear Developer Network (SDN) for its community of users and partners to freely build integrations and plugins to further extend the functionality of the company’s software quality tools. Customers and partners can build plugins and extensions for most SmartBear products, starting with any of the Ready! API family of tools, to meet their specific needs. The SDN provides an opportunity for the SmartBear community to collaborate on projects, share ideas and the plugins themselves.
“We see a lot of opportunity with this program and we’re excited to leverage the smart developer community out there,” said Lorinda Brandon, Technical Evangelist, API Products at SmartBear. “The Ready! API plugin framework is designed to be easy to use but also provides power and flexibility in creating additional features and product integrations. We have a number of technology alliances already that are using the framework and we look forward to growing that community.”
SmartBear has already collaborated with several API product companies, including 3scale, Apiary, IBM, Mashery, an Intel Company, MuleSoft and Swagger, among others, and expects to add more. Various plugins are currently available on the SDN including RAML, Groovy Console, SSL Workaround for REST Discovery, Apiary’s API Blueprint, APIs from 3scale, Dragonfly, IBM API Management and Mashery Intel I/O Docs.
“Building and publishing our 3scale plugin for SmartBear’s Ready! API was quick and totally pain-free,” said Manfred Bortenschlager, API Market Development Director at 3scale. “For us, this is a very effective way to extend the features of our API Management so that our customers can import, test and refine their APIs.”
“SmartBear’s Ready! API family of tools makes it easy for developers to build and publish plugins,” said Sumit Sharma, Director of API Strategy at MuleSoft. “The RAML plugin is one example of how this community is offering further flexibility and choice for designing APIs.”
“Working with SmartBear’s plugin development kit allowed us to quickly develop an integration between Mashery’s I/O Docs and Ready! API, which we think will be of enormous benefit to our combined customer communities,” said Jeremy Pollock, Director, Product Management at Mashery, an Intel company. “Using the quick start elements like the Maven archetype and sample code on Github made the whole development process easy to understand. We are looking forward to working with the SmartBear Developer Network to build more plugins together in the future.”
“API developers face a challenge knowing when their API is truly ready, before they share it with other app developers,” said Sid Bhatia, Program Director, API Economy Product Management at IBM. “Now with the Ready! API plugin for IBM API Management, developers can easily define a REST or SOAP API, thoroughly test it and then simply export the ready API to the API Manager console. In addition, an app developer can easily import a REST or SOAP API definition from the IBM developer portal into the Ready! API testing suite. This seamlessness accelerates developer productivity. We are very excited about this partnership with SmartBear because it delivers the industry’s first bi-directional integration for both REST and SOAP APIs.”
WSO2 Vice President of Product Management, Isabelle Mauny said, “The open architecture of SmartBear’s Ready! API simplified the development process, enabling us to rapidly create and integrate our WSO2 API Manager plugin for Ready! API. Now through the plugin, users can import an API into Ready! API simply by providing the WSO2 API Manager connection details and selecting the API to test, providing a seamless experience.”
Ready! API’s plugin architecture makes extending the tool fast and easy. The plugin framework uses annotation-based extension points instead of XML configuration files and provides automatic installation of any third-party dependencies. Ready! API offers a plugin browser so users are able to find and install plugins quickly and easily.
For more information on the SDN, visit: http://smartbear.com/smartbear-developer-network/.
About SmartBear Software
SmartBear is the choice of more than two million software professionals and over 25,000 organizations in 90 countries that use its products to build and deliver the world’s best software applications. The company’s quality management software supports the key application delivery processes of development, testing, API readiness and end user experience monitoring across desktop, Web and mobile platforms. With millions of developers, testers and operations teams already using its products, SmartBear is profitable, growing and global. Get started on the path to building and delivering the planet’s next great application at www.smartbear.com.
