IBM Acquires StrongLoop – Leveling Up Node.js in the Enterprise

Today IBM announced the acquisition of StrongLoop, Inc, leaders in enterprise development on Node.js and major contributors to Express, LoopBack, and other Node.js tools and frameworks.

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Node.js is an incredible tool for rapidly building highly performant and scalable back end systems, and you develop it using a familiar core language that most front-end developers are already accustomed to, JavaScript. This acquisition is positioned to greatly enhance Node.js in the enterprise, and StrongLoop’s offerings will be integrated into IBM Bluemix, IBM MobileFirst, and WebSphere.

Even though the acquisition is still “hot off of the presses”, you can start using these tools together today:

You can read more about this acquisition and the future vision between IBM and StrongLoop on the StrongLoop blog, IBM Bluemix Blog, and IBM MobileFirst Blog.

If you haven’t heard about StrongLoop’s LoopBack framework, it enables you to easily connect and expose your data as REST services. It provides the ability to visually create data models in a graphical (or command line) interface, which are used to automatically generate REST APIs – thus generating CRUD operations for your REST services tier, without having to write any code.

Why is this important?

It makes API development easier and drastically reduces time from concept to implementation. If you haven’t yet looked at the LoopBack framework, you should definitely check it out. You can build API layers for your apps literally in minutes. Check out the video below for a quick introduction:

Again, be sure to check out these posts that detail the integration steps so you can start using these tools together today: