The future: For everything an API

It’s becoming apparent already: Anything that consumes power is going to be connected in some way to the Internet. Cars, refrigerators, thermostats, TV, personal drones, you name it. There will be a way to connect with it, interact with it, and control it.

APIs are a powerful way to glean extra value from an enterprise’s data assets and digital resources, extending the reach of products and services, building the brand, and even generating revenue. It requires a thoughtful approach and commitment of resources to make it work.

“We call it the ‘Internetting space,’” says Kamenetska. “We’re really in a post-website era…Anything that you touch is going to become Internet-enabled, and the apps that are going to be there and the experience that you’re going to be having on those devices are really made possible by APIs.”



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Birth of the Web API

APIs did not start with the Web. In fact, one of the most successful API stories ever is the Microsoft Windows API, which enabled all those third-party developers to create applications for Windows, and in turn propel it to near-monopoly status in desktop operating systems. Today, though, the talk is all about Web APIs and the interconnected ecosystems they support.

Among the earliest players to embrace Web APIs were the Internet giants-to-be such as Google, Amazon, and Salesforce. They started leveraging APIs in their early days, which helped them to become the dominant online forces they are today.

“They looked at these platforms they were creating and asked themselves, how do we generate interest?” says John Rakowski, a Forrester Research analyst serving infrastructure and operations professionals. “How do we generate further partnerships with our customers and with partners out there who can help us innovate a lot quicker, who can utilize our platform to build our brand, but also to create a partner ecosystem?”
The answer was to pursue a proactive API strategy, reaching out to developers and supporting them as they created their own layers of interface and functionality on top of Google’s or Amazon’s or Salesforce’s data. The developers could be using the APIs to create applications for niche markets, or to integrate with other applications.

In addition to creating a partner ecosystem, Rakowski says that opening up a platform via APIs “also gets your brand out there and makes people aware of it very, very quickly, because they can interact with your platform, which means all-in-all, it leads to faster growth because there’s more awareness of your platform in the market.”

Source: Keynote Benchmark

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An Overview Of APIs And How They're Changing

Virtually anything you do online all day long — and virtually everything that makes the Internet in 2013 so convenient, helpful, portable, and smart — is made possible through the magic of APIs. Application Programming Interfaces enable all the devices on the Internet to access data and resources without the user having to actually visit the source.

It’s reasonable to say that APIs have totally made the online experience what it is today. They extend our Internet connection far beyond the browser to phones and tablets and every kind of connected device, to the point where one no longer thinks of being “online” — we’re just connected. And when you’re accessing the Internet the old-fashioned way, through a browser on a computer, APIs have transformed websites into data-driven, interactive, media-rich experiences.

Before long, everything we do, from driving our cars to managing our health and finances to entertaining ourselves to controlling every gadget, system and device in our lives, will be accomplished through the interaction of APIs.

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Devices For The Always-On-Workforce

Today’s mobile email, document shuffling, and occasional presentation are small potatoes compared to what’s coming. Off-the-shelf productivity apps? Yesterday’s news. Businesses mobilizing their core enterprise systems will give workforces anytime, anywhere access to company data, systems, and infrastructure. It’s not unreasonable to think that ultimately, anything that can be done on a company-networked computer will be able to be done on a smartphone or tablet. (And a significant number of those devices will be personally owned by the workers.) - 

Marketing managers will access corporate analytics on their phone while they’re in a meeting. Plant supervisors will order parts for their assembly line from an iPad. Field service reps will check the warehouse for repair parts while they’re at a customer site. And of course, the emails will continue to flow back and forth while workers are at the opera, with their kids at the playground, or on the road. 

Some companies are well on their way towards such uber-connectedness. And many more are taking their first steps in that direction.

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Challenges To Making The Enterprise Road-Ready

There’s a lot more to enterprise mobility than building apps and distributing them to the workforce. Security, functionality, performance, and connectivity are among the major challenges IT departments face.

Since the early days of mobility, IT departments kept their mobile workers locked down with closed systems and standardized, company-issued phones. It was largely a BlackBerry world, with only authorized apps allowed on the phone. This simplified the security challenge, with IT maintaining reasonable access control, as well as the ability to remotely wipe phones if these were compromised.

The smartphone revolution, though, first saw workers double-clutching — the company BlackBerry in one hand, their own iPhone in the other — and then demanding that IT enable their personal phones to access company data so they could ditch the BlackBerry entirely. It was the beginning of the new, Bring Your Own Device phenomenon. But mixing up company and personal data and apps on phones that aren’t in IT’s control, on unsecured networks, has opened up Pandora’s box for corporate data security. This remains one of the biggest challenges for enterprise mobilization.

Ensuring the performance of new mobile apps is another huge challenge. Building mobile apps is more complicated than desktop apps, typically involving up to four operating systems and various form factors. iOS and Android are musts. The BlackBerry is still in play in many enterprises. And some are anticipating that Windows Phone will get a boost with the rollout of Windows 8.

Testing enterprise mobile apps is an even more complicated issue. Even if development is restricted to the two leading operating systems, there are scores of screen sizes, resolutions, UI nuances and other variations to deal with, particularly on the Android side. Proving an app on one device (or even several) for an OS does not guarantee it will function properly on most or all devices running that OS. It’s a complex and critical development challenge.


Related Links

The March Towards Mobilization

Optimize End User Experience For Mobile Devices