DreamFactory Software
Standardizing and Automating the API Building Process

Following the rapid innovations in the field of cloud-based software, Internet of Things (IoT), and connected devices, application programming interfaces (APIs) now play an important role in an organization’s IT ecosystem. An API paves the way for a company to streamline its business growth as it allows developers to improve on existing products or solutions and integrate with third-party software to better collaborate and generate new revenue streams. However, with the increased dependency on APIs in present day digital environments, integrating APIs with diverse software applications has become complex. To address these challenges, DreamFactory Software offers an automated turnkey platform that generates, manages, and efficiently integrates APIs into different environments.

“We often see that there are no standardized practices in place for building APIs,” states Jason Gilmore, CTO of DreamFactory. “This led us to develop a platform that makes a company’s data readily available, centralizing information for developers and establishing streamlined access to, and manipulation of, data.” Initially a Salesforce solutions provider developing tools for data transfer in and out of the platform, DreamFactory realized that Salesforce was not the root cause of data management problems within an organization. “Moving data from databases became problematic when we needed to transfer files directly to individuals via email or mobile applications,” says James Crennan, CEO of DreamFactory.

Capable of running on a wide variety of cloud environments, DreamFactory’s open source representational state transfer (REST) API platform provides solutions for specific data integration problems by auto-generating APIs for mobile, web, and IoT applications. Crennan believes that building software-specific APIs bottlenecks the entire IT process, and Gilmore supports the notion by stating that standardizing APIs negates the need for expensive, time-consuming development processes and offers better security. DreamFactory consolidates the endpoints and services, which ensures user safety while effectively streamlining the development process for companies by transforming any database into a REST API platform.

“As a free, open source, scalable platform, our offering has enabled many companies to save time and money on their API development,” states Crennan.

One of the client success stories exemplifying the capabilities of DreamFactory is that of a financial service provider that struggled to integrate with their clients’ APIs. After spending millions of dollars and over five years in developing 2,500 client-facing APIs, the firm hired a team of developers that was able to build only 10 APIs a week. And, when the need to change the APIs arose, the same team was needed to be rehired. This cost the firm resources they were not inclined to spend. It was then that DreamFactory proved valuable, delivering a platform with the ability to auto-generate a completely documented, live, standardized, and secure API instantly with no required coding. These capabilities allowed DreamFactory to complete a process that normally would take five years, in two months.

As a free, open source, scalable platform, our offering has enabled many companies to save time and money on their API development

With their on-premise solution, Crennan and his team intuitively built the platform to be hosted internally in a client’s data centers—with simple installation wizards for Linux and Microsoft environments while granting the user full configurability options. Over the years, such prominent features have paved the way for DreamFactory’s collaborations with Fortune 50 and Fortune 500 companies spanning various verticals. “We are looking forward to releasing our new SaaS DreamFactory solution by the end of the first quarter, which will help us focus on a new generation of startups and small-medium enterprises that recognize the value for automated API generation and management platforms,” concludes Gilmore.