3scale Networks, a Barcelona, Spain-based provider of API management solutions, has raised $800.000 in equity and loans from Spanish VC Inveready Seed Capital and public entities like NEOTEC and CIDEM / ACC1Ó.
3scale essentially provides a SaaS API management infrastructure solution that enables Internet-based companies to secure, control, monitor and generate revenue from the distribution and usage of their data, content and services through APIs and Web services.
The company markets 3scale CONNECT, a self-service, plug-and-play solution that allows small and medium-sized API providers to enjoy a full-fledged API management infrastructure solution that can be deployed in mere minutes.
The product is free for traffic volumes of up to 50.000 hits per day, which is reasonable enough for smaller API providers who are just getting started. When customers reach 1 million hits per day, 3scale charges $340 per month, and the company also boasts enterprise-grade solutions for Internet companies with higher traffic volumes of up to 10 million hits per day.
“The API space is seeing massive acceleration right now and new investment will allow us to both help more new customers launch and grow their APIs and expand our solution with some great new features we have in the pipeline”, says Steven Willmott, co-founder and CEO of 3scale. “3scale solution gives you great control of your infrastructure out of the box and allows you to focus on the functionality and services you’re actually delivering rather than access management, monitoring and other infrastructure functions.”
The company has signed up 25+ customers, ranging from small to enterprise, since launching in public beta in November 2008. With customers like Wine.com (they “uncorked” their API last September), By Voice and DeepDyve, 3scale’s infrastructure is already processing millions of transactions on a daily basis.
But 3scale Networks is far from the only company to recognize the growing need for API management solutions – it competes heavily with other venture-backed companies like Mashery, StrikeIron and Sonoa Systems.
The latter recently launched Apigee, a Twitter API dashboard.