I love this quote in Jack Vaughan's Techtarget coverage of the Vordel API Server launch:

An API server can provide the policy governance to ensure APIs are tuned for performance and scalability, according to Mike Gionfriddo, CTO at Safeway subsidiary, Blackhawk Network. Gionfriddo’s firm is a provider of prepaid and financial payment cards, and its business is seeing big changes as the Web grows and as mobile devices are used for redeeming gift cards.

“We have been using the Vordel gateway for about two years and we primarily use it to implement our security policies around inbound and outbound Internet traffic,” Gionfriddo told SearchSOA.com in an email message. “We have been working closely with Vordel on their new API Management offering and we believe it brings a type of serious management around security and governance with respect to APIs. 

“Specifically, we leverage Vordel’s capabilities to help us effectively manage our certificate based security model with respect to our APIs. In addition, we believe that we can use the SLA management function to better govern the SLAs with our partners,” Gionfriddo remarked. 

Is Gionfriddo seeing the rise of REST and a decline in SOAP as others have forecast?  “Absolutely. I could go into a long diatribe about how SOAP is no better than ONC RPC, but I will spare you,” he responded. “The reasoning is simple,” he contined, asking “ What scales better, the Internet or an ESB?” His answer is “REST” 

“REST simply follows the model of Web,” he concluded.

http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/news/2240158705/API-server-matched-with-services-gateway-for-managing-integrated-REST-services