GraphQL is an open source query language developed in-house at Facebook to help developers better manage the API, opened in 2015 as a rival (or complement) to REST and other tools. Companies using it include Airbnb, Pinterest, PayPal, and of course Facebook's corporate parent Meta. IBM has acquired a GraphQL startup named StepZen, which provides tools to developers and users working in hybrid cloud environments to build and scale GraphQL deployments to pull out data from disparate sources, getting more developer attention toward the technology.
Terms of the deal are not disclosed. It was founded in 2020 by the people who founded Apigee, which Google bought for $625 million in 2016. It seems to have raised a mere $8 million since then and hadn't raised in more than a year. It is IBM's first acquisition of 2023 and StepZen and its team will be an addition to IBM's Software unit, said Kareem Yusuf, who is SVP for product management and growth in the unit.

StepZen's customers are DataStax, Komex and HP Enterprise.

The premise for this startup is "state of data and how it's stored and utilized today has gotten very complex" with the move to the cloud, plus most people are still working in hybrid architectures.

It's in those warehouses, lakes, lots of public and private clouds, and on premises. With that data extant; APIs help pull that data and use it from anywhere of disparate locations. One of the languages created for that is GraphQL-it simplifies making those varied data calls from a single API.

"That's why the popularity and usage of GraphQL is growing very fast," writes Yusuf.

However, as some have already noted, GraphQL is a particularly complex framework; therefore, its features remain unutilized for some of them. So to describe this relationship, StepZen in short represents a means to interact with the use of GraphQL more easily.

However, opinion is sharply divided on just how widely adopted GraphQL is today. One survey I saw from 2019 mentions that almost 38% of developers have adopted it to pull data from multiple sources. Yusuf cites stats from Gartner saying that less than 10% of enterprises-using a category, not developers, would have been using GraphQL in 2021.

Still, Gartner analysts predict this number will hit 50% by 2025, which is one reason why IBM has scooped up StepZen and wants to become a more active player in this space.

In its latest earnings report, IBM disclosed - along with much of what we've seen across the technology sector - plans to cut its workforce and eliminate 3,900 jobs, or 1.5% of the company's employees. Software today generates over half of its revenues, and it remains one of the few areas of growth for this company. Software of $7.3 billion represented the final quarter of total revenue of $16.7 billion, which was flat, while software grew at 3%.

StepZen is an example of where the company is investing in what is working for it in the near term and moving to get a head start on what will be needed to sustain future growth.