BetterCloud is joining the OpenAPI Initiative! BetterCloud is a SaaS management platform (SMP) that provides IT professionals with a solution to discover, manage and secure the growing stack of SaaS applications in their digital workplace. The driving force behind BetterCloud is to ensure organizations get the transformative value and benefits of adopting SaaS applications, while ensuring IT has complete control over their environment and can serve as an enabler for the business.
BetterCloud helps manage SaaS data and creates custom, automated workflows, you can monitor and operate with a centralized admin console. To request a demo, click here.
We talked with BetterCloud to understand how SaaSOps works, its future and what becoming a member of the OpenAPI Initiative would mean for them.
What is SaaSOps and what size companies should evaluate SaaSOps?
Response from Jamie Tischart, CTO
SaaSOps is a practice referring to how software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications are discovered, managed, and secured through centralized and automated operations (Ops), resulting in reduced friction, improved collaboration, and better employee experience.
SaaSOps can be divided into three categories. The starting point is SaaS discovery, which involves understanding what applications exist within your SaaS environment. Next is SaaS Management, which addresses what IT needs to ensure proper onboarding / offboarding procedure, access management, spend management and more. The third category is SaaS Security, which focuses on data protection; specifically incident response, file security, identity and access, and regulatory compliance.
SaaSOps can be implemented by any company, regardless of size. Mid- to large-size companies tend to have more complex SaaS stacks, and therefore are more likely to embrace SaaSOps in order to manage and protect their SaaS environments.
Where will SaaSOps be in 2-3 years?
From Jamie Tischart, CTO
We are going to see explosive growth in the coming years as companies embrace more and more best-in-breed SaaS applications. The larger and more complex a company’s stack, the more IT needs robust practices in place to discover, manage and secure those applications. We’ve already seen a surge in demand for SaaSOps professionals since the start of the pandemic, and we expect that to continue growing.
Why is BetterCloud joining the OpenAPI Initiative and why now?
Response from Brian Miller, Senior Staff Engineer
Given we hadn’t known an insider until now—thank you Lorinda Brandon—it never dawned on us to explore joining as a possibility. We are delighted to help and grow the community and make the OpenAPI community more of a de facto standard within the SaaSOps world.
Response from Lomesh Patel, Software Architect
In addition to Brian’s response above, we’re interested in defining an API standard for integrating with a SaaSOps platform and we’re looking at OpenAPI as a foundation for that.
Have you implemented OpenAPI Specification 3.1.0? What advice do you have for companies evaluating it?
From Brian Miller, Senior Staff Engineer
Implementation is a loaded word. Are we going to implement it for documenting internal and external apis? Yes! We have already done that at a certain level, but more importantly we are using OAS as a foundation to expand and define what it means to manage your SaaSOps integration.
From Lomesh Patel, Software Architect
Our advice for companies evaluating Specification 3.1.0 would be to standardize all of their API (both internal and external) definitions and documentation using OpenAPI and to develop all their product features with API-first approach.
Welcome BetterCloud! Very pleased to have you as part of the OpenAPI Initiative!
OpenAPI Resources
To learn more about participate in the evolution of the OpenAPI Specification: https://www.openapis.org/participate/how-to-contribute
● OpenAPI Specification Twitter
● OpenAPI Specification GitHub – Get started immediately!
● Share your OpenAPI Spec v3 Implementations
About the OpenAPI Initiative
The OpenAPI Initiative (OAI) was created by a consortium of forward-looking industry experts who recognize the immense value of standardizing on how APIs are described. As an open governance structure under the Linux Foundation, the OAI is focused on creating, evolving and promoting a vendor neutral description format. The OpenAPI Specification was originally based on the Swagger Specification, donated by SmartBear Software. To get involved with the OpenAPI Initiative, please visit https://www.openapis.org
About Linux Foundation
Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation projects like Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js and more are considered critical to the development of the world’s most important infrastructure. Its development methodology leverages established best practices and addresses the needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.