Sometime this quarter Intel expects to close on its just revealed intended purchase of Mashery, a seven-year-old multi-tenant SaaS start-up that manages API technology – APIs being the lingua franca of the Internet.
Intel already has its own Expressway API Manager.
Terms were not disclosed but the rumor is Intel is spending something like $120 million or $180 million on the acquisition.
The ReadWrite Web blog, which says it’s covered Mashery closely for some time, figures the “implications of the deal are huge: it signals Intel’s recognition that the central processing unit is no longer a silicon chip. It is the network.”
And evidently, like IBM, software and services are the place to retreat to. Remember, Intel bought McAfee for $7.7 billion in 2010. Now it’s supposedly appealing more to start-ups than the old-line PC houses.