IBM

Photo courtesy of apievangelist.com

We are clearly far past the point of having to explain the benefits of API management and services, but there are still specific aspects where more attention is merited. In particular, partners.

One morning in April 2001, scores of tech workers pondered the arrival of dozens of black penguins spray-painted on street corners from San Francisco’s SoMa district to the Haight Ashbury. Beside each stenciled penguin was a peace sign and a heart. It quickly emerged that these new arrivals were in fact IBM’s attempt to engage the open source software community with clip art linked to the birth of Linux and the Grateful Dead.