Vordel, the Dublin purveyor of the enterprise-ready API Server that delivers mission-critical and potentially revenue-generating APIs and apps to the cloud and mobile devices, is getting bought by publicly traded Paris-based middleware house Axway for some undisclosed amount of money.

Vordel's APIs, SOA governance and identity management capabilities are supposed to expand Axway's Managed File Transfer (MFT), B2B and integration wares to the enterprise edge and ultimately provide customers with a single solution that lets them govern data flows that extend to the cloud and mobile gismos.

Axway is proposing to offer a full suite that serves all enterprise integration patterns. It says data flowing across the enterprise edge will soon be governed with one solution whether the data is B2B, MFT, API or Web Services.

The combined widgetry is supposed to change the dynamic of the enterprise edge, extending to cloud integration with mobile access to legacy data and innovative identity solutions. Central policy management will provide end-to-end visibility from the cloud to on-premises, from B2B to API, and from legacy to mobile.

Vordel's products and solutions are described as core to the envisioned Axway suite and investment in the widgetry should deepen.

Axway CEO Christophe Fabre said in a statement that "By choosing the right approach to integration CIOs and enterprise architects can save their organizations money and help ensure the success of their integration projects across the enterprise and into the cloud....The breadth of the combined Axway-Vordel platform will now provide companies with a single consolidated approach to their application and data integration needs - across on-premise and cloud environments."

Axway is using its bank credit line to finance the deal and expects the acquisition, which should get done this quarter, to turn accretive the first year.

Axway claims 11,000 clients in 100 countries.

Global enterprises use the Vordel API Server to increase performance, strengthen security and enhance the interoperability of their cloud and mobile deployments.

Clients include more than 150 licensed customers in 32 countries, including Allianz, ASR Nederland, BAT, Barclays, Bell Canada, BNP Paribas Fortis Bank, CA, Ericsson, the EU Council, Telecom Italia Mobile, the FAA, the US Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department.

Vordel API Server is for APIs of all types, including REST APIs for mobile and the web, SOAP APIs for Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), file-based interfaces for B2B integration, and other types of application integration interfaces. It enables enterprises to achieve standardized API delivery to ensure security, performance, and high availability and encapsulates capabilities from Application Gateway, Cloud Services Broker, and API Management into a unified API operating platform.

CEO Vic Morris called the move "a new beginning for Vordel and will ensure continued development and support of the Vordel API Server while also benefiting from the momentum that Axway will provide."

Forrester, recalling Vordel's history, called it a security specialist and said it getting bought by a middleware and B2B integration house makes perfect sense because of the need to modernize security around integration scenarios, noting that traditional B2B integration over private networks is being replaced more and more with B2B connectivity and cloud-based integration over the Internet, that traditional rigid EDI gateways still exist and handle huge volumes, but many new applications are developed in the cloud and access synchronous REST or SOAP APIs for immediate customer and partner engagement and that large enterprises have heterogeneous integration strategies to meet different integration characteristics.

"Enterprises," it says, "see an increasing value in openness, and some are even starting to sell commercial real-time access to their applications. The more the boundaries of an enterprise are extended by integration offerings, the more a federation of security becomes important. It's today mainly a federated identity management and will soon be a more sophisticated open API management."