Enterprises are API-crazy, and CA Technologies Inc. is attempting to cash in with the acquisition of Runscope Inc., a provider of API monitoring tools delivered as a service.

Application program interfaces have exploded in popularity as organizations have sought to expose more internal data and services to employees, customers and business partners. Published APIs can be used by other applications to invoke functions such as processing a query or approving a transaction automatically, without the hassle of manual intervention.

However, most monitoring tools are focused on more traditional applications involving user interaction and are not well-suited for monitoring APIs, Ali Siddiqui, general manager for the Agile Operations Business Unit at CA Technologies, wrote in a blog post.

“These products are not well suited for monitoring APIs. If you try using them for APIs, you will have many gaps and a high cost of ongoing internal maintenance,” he wrote. Performance monitoring is becoming increasingly important as business partners judge their experiences by availability and response times without ever logging on to a remote system.

The global API testing market is expected to grow about 20 percent annually from $384 million in 2016 to $1.1 billion by 2022, according to MarketsandMarkets Research Private Ltd.

CA said it’s completing development of an API lifecycle management suite that provides for the creation, management, testing and monitoring of APIs. The combination of the company’s BlazeMeter API Test product, which was acquired last fall, and Runscope’s API monitoring capabilities can help organizations deal with the complexity that APIs introduce, CA said.

“You want to know if your APIs are even available to the clients that need to reach them,” Siddiqui wrote. “For mobile apps, it is likely the API needs to be available around the world.” API monitoring includes testing from multiple locations to ensure accessibility. It also measures performance against service levels and inspects message payloads to validate that the data being transmitted is correct.

Runscope’s product is used by more than 1,200 organizations to run 19 million API uptime and data validation checks per day, Chief Executive John Sheehan wrote in a blog post. Founded in 2013, it has raised approximately $7.1 million and employs fewer than 50 people, all of whom will join CA.

The price of the acquisition wasn’t disclosed. CA said it would fold Runscope into its Digital Experience Insights portfolio of tools for monitoring complex systems from the customer point of view.

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