Informatica LLC is teaming up with Google LLC’s Apigee product group to offer a new unified application programming interface and integration service.

Informatica is a provider of enterprise-grade cloud data management products, while Apigee is an API platform available on Google’s cloud. It’s for enterprises to gain more visibility and control over the APIs that connect applications and data across multiple clouds and on-premises installations.

Today’s collaboration is designed to “connect and orchestrate data services and applications across cloud and on-premise environments” the companies said. The idea is to create a “continuously connected business to drive agility” through innovations in artificial intelligence-driven integrations and APIs.

Informatica Integration Cloud for Apigee enables users to create APIs that can access applications, data and metadata more easily. Users will also benefit from AI-driven predictive analysis and recommendations powered by Informatica’s CLAIRE engine, Ed Anuff, director of product and strategy at Apigee, said in a blog post.

Informatica Integration Cloud for Apigee, built atop Informatica’s infrastructure platform-as-a-service offering, simplifies API development and management by enabling this to be done with zero coding. With the offering, developers and analysts will be able to select any application or data set and transform it into a secure, managed API with a single click. Once done, the newly created API can then be integrated with business processes via a drag-and-drop wizard.

The collaboration also comes with product integrations that allow Apigee users to use Informatica’s wide range of integrations with other enterprise applications. Meanwhile, Informatica users will be able to publish their APIs through Apigee and have that service manage them.

The partnership comes at a critical time. Enterprises are facing broad application and data integration challenges as a result of the growing adoption of APIs and cloud platforms, explained Ronen Schwartz, senior vice president and general manager of big data, cloud and data integration at Informatica. “Enterprises require both integration platforms and API management to create an advanced, comprehensive integration platform,” he said.

Holger Mueller, principal analyst and vice president of Constellation Research Inc., said that as application integration moves from pure data movement to more sophisticated API-level integrations, the partnership between Apigee and Informatica is a natural consequence of a larger trend toward next-generation applications.

“Because these apps span public clouds and on-premises and are inherently modern and API-based, enterprises look for vendors who can bring integration closer to their API repository of choice, in this case Apigee,” Mueller said. “As usual, executives will need to trade off integration benefits versus the lock-in consequences, but we expect joint users of these platforms to welcome the partnership and better integration.”

Image: Informatica