Alcatel-Lucent today announced a new cloud-based developer platform and business model that it says "flips the traditional API aggregation approach on its head."

According to the company, Alcatel-Lucent's developer platform provides service providers and enterprises with tools that enable partners and third-party developers to build, test, manage and distribute applications across networks, including television, broadband Internet and mobile.

The solution allows service providers to securely expose their unique network APIs to more developers. As a result, service providers and developers can jointly facilitate the creation and delivery of new applications. By speeding services innovation to service provider customers, more applications will be tailored to vertical markets and will ultimately drive more revenue across the value chain.

The platform builds on the Alcatel-Lucent Application Exposure Suite, announced in December, by including a set of developer tools, a virtual sandbox and application distribution to address the entire developer lifecycle and support service providers and enterprises with an end-to-end API and application solution.

"We're in this to help everyone in the application ecosystem make money," said Johnson Agogbua, head of Application Enablement solutions for Alcatel-Lucent. "The research we've done with more than 1,000 developers shows that the bundled approach to aggregation could drive up an API's value by 200-300 percent versus its value on its own. It also shows that developers want to participate in API revenue sharing and have access to service provider analytics."