Nokia snaps up Rapid to give network APIs a boost
“If you’re dealing with APIs, you’d better have the best management system for APIs, because that’s what you’ve got to deliver at the end of the day to create that developer experience,” said Raghav Sahgal, the president of Nokia’s cloud and network services business group, on a call with Light Reading. “We probably have the strongest API management system now with Rapid and the technology and people they bring.”
Nokia is not disclosing the financial or other terms of this deal, which indicates it is considerably smaller than Ericsson’s Vonage takeover. Rules on stock market disclosure suggest Nokia is paying well below €100 million ($106 million) for Rapid, according to one estimate supplied to Light Reading.
Nokia, by contrast, seems to be making a relatively small acquisition at a low point for the market. Its plan is to integrate Rapid into its Network as Code platform, where it will play a distinctive role. “There is no overlap with Network as Code,” said Saghal. “There is no duplication of anything that we have invested in. This is just enhancing a particular part of the Network as Code platform and making it better.”
Omdia, a sister company to Light Reading, predicts the market for network API transactions will generate almost $9 billion in 2029, up from just $161 million last year.
But Network as Code, strengthened by the Rapid takeover, is positioned quite differently by Sahgal than Vonage is by Ericsson. Nokia’s Finnish rival has moved the aggregation platform part of Vonage into a joint venture (JV) with 11 Tier 1 telcos. The goal of that is to function as a kind of super aggregator between networks and developer-facing platforms, including Vonage. Through Network as Code, Nokia’s main ambition is seemingly to play the same role of intermediary between telcos and other platforms.
“Our goal is not to build a Google marketplace or an Infobip marketplace,” said Sahgal, referring to a couple of the best-known platforms that exist. “Our goal is to build the enabling platform, and we are very, very focused on that. We want to make sure that we don’t compete but that we enable anything and everything across a horizontal frame. The strategy is different from that perspective.”
https://www.lightreading.com/5g/nokia-snaps-up-rapid-to-give-network-apis-a-boost
mutta ilmeisesti tuo siis Rapid Api ja itse Rapid jää tyhjäksi yhtiöksi tjsp…
