Black Parrot Labs was founded to provide long-term, enterprise-grade support to companies using Apiman in production. We ensure that our clients have the confidence to deploy critical Apiman workloads, knowing they have people that created Apiman behind them if something goes wrong.
We also provide a range of professional services, including consulting and training. Our consulting services are often used by clients who need to add API Management capabilities to their platforms and want to leverage our unparalleled Apiman expertise. Plus, working with us to develop new features, functionality, and develop plugins, etc.
As a company, one of our core missions is to ensure the health of the Apiman open source community; we invest a large proportion of our engineering resources into maintaining the upstream. No other company has this commitment, and we have been the principal contributors and maintainers of the project for a long time.
At Black Parrot Labs, we are dedicated to open source, ensuring that all changes to the Apiman codebase are contributed back to the community.
Contrastingly, our clients are never forced to open source their own code or innovations. Apiman is fully modular, with many vendors creating their own proprietary plugins, extensions, and integrations. This is precisely how we envisioned Apiman being used when we created the project; downstream vendors and customers can create proprietary integrations and functionality without compromising the upstream project.
You may be wondering about the origin our company's name, Black Parrot Labs. The Seychelles Black Parrot is the national bird of Seychelles, identifiable by its distinctively musical voice, it is endemic to Praslin Island and is carefully protected due to its scarce numbers. Our founder, Marc Savy, chose the name as homage to his British-Seychellois heritage.
The upstream project is fully open source, and uses open standards and formats. You are not locked in via complex licensing restrictions nor via proprietary formats. If you decide you want to use a different solution, it's easy for you to do so.
Apiman doesn't try to force you into an expensive SaaS model; it works on everything from bare metal and containers, to Kubernetes and AWS. It's just a matter of configuration or customisation.
And, you aren't stuck with one support provider; you are free to go with whomever you think provides the best service for your business requirements.
Naturally, we think you will love working with Black Parrot Labs!
Apiman was designed from the ground up to be easy to integrate with other systems. Whether it's metrics implementations, or custom API registries, we've got you covered.
And if what you want is not available now, or you have a custom requirement, you can extend Apiman to do what you need via easily-maintainable Java plugins.
Whether you require an enhancement to Apiman itself, or simply the creation of a plugin, Black Parrot Labs will work with you to create the functionality and outcome you need.
Open source solutions such as Apiman are more cost-effective than proprietary platforms with similar capabilities, with a baseline zero cost.
You are not forced to buy into a SaaS model with its bill-shock risk, or contorted licensing models that have unpredictable pricing. With the upstream, you don't need to pay for anything if you don't want to!
We offer affordable support and other services, ensuring that the Apiman project remains financially sustainable.
BPL is the only company with a commitment to reinvest into the Apiman open source community.
With a permissive Apache Version 2 license, there are no complex licensing or IP concerns, and you can integrate Apiman into your own platform without worrying, nor being forced to open source your code.
Apiman also provides a fully functional API Management solution without forcing you to pay. It's not just a 'free gateway', nor is a vast proportion of its functionality hidden behind a paywall.
With many semi-proprietary products, you only discover that essential features are paid-only once it's too late, and you are locked in.
Downstream providers are welcome to offer commercial functionality, but the upstream project will always remain fully open source.
Apiman has been around for over 9 years. It has a vast amount of real-world usage under its belt from large enterprises around the globe.
And, because it's all open source, it's easy to debug, easy to maintain, and easy to modify.
Black Parrot Labs was founded by the co-founder and maintainers of Apiman. We have unparalleled knowledge of the project a key goal of our business is to ensure the sustainability of the upstream.
