From ETL to API Reciprocity, Looking at 20 Service Providers

by on 02/28/2013

I spent time this week looking at 20, of what I’m calling API reciprocity providers, who are providing a new generation of what is historically known as ETL in the enterprise, to connect, transfer, transform and push data and content between the cloud services we are increasingly growing dependent on. With more and more of our lives existing in the cloud and via mobile devices, the need to migrate data and content between services will only grow more urgent. While ETL has all the necessary tools to accomplish the job, the cloud democratized IT resources, and the same will occur to ETL, making these tools accessible by the masses. There are quite a few ETL solutions, but I feel there are 3 solutions that are starting to make a migration towards an easier to understand and implement vision of ETL:   These providers are more robust, and provide much of the classic ETL tools the enterprise is used to, but also have the new emphasis on API driven services.... read more.

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Merging API Automation and Interoperability Into API Reciprocity

by on 02/27/2013

While I’m wading through dictionaries and thesauruses in an effort to find a more appropriate term “governance”, when looking at SOA governance through the API lense--I figured I’d flush out another area I’m working to define a term that appropriately describes automation and interoperability using APIs. Yesterday I took a look at 31 backend as a service (BaaS) providers, in hopes of understanding more about what value they provide. Today I'm diving into the automation section of my new API trends area. While reviewing, I noticed the exact same companies that were under automation were also in interoperability. So I set out to find a new word to apply to this next generation of ETL providers that are building bridges between cloud platforms using APIs, as well as legacy data connections. I have settled on the word reciprocity.... read more.

Tags: Connection, Etl, Extract, Load, Reciprocity, Transform

What Is A Better Word For Governance When It Comes To APIs?

by on 02/27/2013

There is a great post by Lorinda Brandon (@lindybrandon) of SmartBear on ProgrammableWeb today called Governance vs Innovation: Do They Have to be Enemies?  She continues a conversation, from API Strategy & Practice around the word "governance", and how in the API space, this is often considered a bad word.   I was moderating the questions for Alistair Farquharson (@afarqu) CTO of SOA Software, when Irakli Nadareishvili (@inadarei) of NPR actually agreed that it is a bad word and asked if we need to evolve beyond it and not embrace it.  I totally agree with Lorinda's approach to walking the line between governance and innovation, and look forward to more discussion around how to analyze API vs SOA principles within the enterprise--striking a balance that works for each individual approach. To help stimulate this conversation I wanted to break down the word, governance.  In the context of IT, governance is: a concept used for activities related to exercising control over services in a service-oriented architecture (SOA). The definitions of SOA governance agree in its purpose of exercising control, but differ in the responsibilities it should have.... read more.

Tags: Apistrat, Governance, smartbear, SOA

75 Features From Across 31 BaaS Providers

by on 02/26/2013

I’m currently tracking on 31 backend as a service providers, in an effort to better understand how this new breed of platforms are helping developers build web and mobile apps. After looking at all the BaaS providers, there are 13 clear leaders: Then there are another 18 other players, trying to play catch up in a space that is working hard to define itself in 2013: My goal is to better understand what features are offered across these 31 BaaS providers. To accomplish this, I spent no more than an hour per provider looking through their sites and playing with their products to get at least a basic understanding of their offerings. When looking for features I tried to standardize the best I could, but it is difficult when there are different approaches to the deployment of resources on each platform. I found about 75 distinct features being offered across the 31 BaaS providers. I’m sure there are other features, and vital details missing, but I wanted to start somewhere.... read more.

Tags: BaaS, BaaS, Features

BaaS Provider Quickblox Offers Unlimited API Calls and Push Notifications

by on 02/26/2013

Backend as a Service (BaaS) provider QuickBlox announced new pricing plans, which includes a free tier up to 10GB in traffic and storage, with unlimited API calls and push notifications. The BaaS space is heating up with lots of discussion about whether you should charge developers by active user, features, storage or API call--with each provider being pretty vocal about where they stand. Quickblox is approach similar to StackMob, who refuses to charge based upon API call, atributing it to a sucess tax. But Quickblox is somewhat different, as they still charge for hard costs like bandwidth and storage--Stackmob only charges by feature. I'm trying to understand all the approaches to BaaS pricing, which was also a panel discussion last week at API Strategy & Practice between Parse, Stackmob, Kinvey, Kii, Cloudmine and Firebase.... read more.

Tags: BaaS, QuickbBlox, StackMob

Which Of The Three OAuth Legs Is The Most Important?

by on 02/26/2013

We closed up the API Strategy & Practice Conference (#APIstrat) last friday with a panel called APIs, Platforms and Ecosystem, where I moderated a healthy discussion with Tyler Stalder (@tylerstalder) of Singly, Seth Blank (@AntiFreeze) of YourTrove, Asif Rahman (@asifrahman) of Newscred, Orian Marx (@orian) of App. net, Travis Wallis (@traviswallis) of PeopleBrowsr around the very broad spectrum of APIs, platforms and the concept of ecosystems. One of the questions I asked the group was, which of the three OAuth Legs is the most important?   To provide a quick primer for the portion of my audience that aren’t OAuth geeks: OAuth is an open standard for authorization that provides a method for clients to access server resources on behalf of a resource owner Ok, what does that mean? Think Twitter. Twitter is server. You are the owner of your tweet resources. When you authenticate anywhere using your Twitter ID, that website or app uses OAuth to get access to your tweets, via the Twitter platform.... read more.

Tags: Apistrat, App.net, Ecosystem, NewsCred, OAuth, peoplebrowsr, Singly, YourTrove

Freemium API Tools Can Drive Experimentation And Innovation

by on 02/26/2013

I’m a firm believer in the power of the freemium model when it comes to APIs. Nothing is as it seems when you are deploying managing or consuming APIs. You have to have room to innovate and iterate without signing contracts or paying too much, before you find exactly the right integration or deployment that works. This freemium approach to APIs is one of the biggest reasons I’ve been supporting 3Scale since early days of API Evangelist. 3Scale was the original API service provider to offer a truly freemium tier for anyone wanting to deploy an API, and remains passionate about this to this day. During the API Strategy & Practice conference in NYC last week, I had the pleasure of meeting the SmartBear team, who share a similar perspective of the space, resulting in them launching a new suite of free tools that will help you develop, test and monitor while building API driven software. SmartBear has published four new free tools for testing and development: SoapUI is a free and open source cross-platform Functional Testing solution. With an easy-to-use graphical interface, SoapUI allows you to easily and rapidly create and execute automated functional, regression, compliance, and load tests.... read more.

Tags: smartbear, Tools

The BaaS Reality TV Show Panel at APIStrat

by on 02/25/2013

One of the lively discussions at the API Strategy & Practice conference in NYC last week was the backend as a service (BaaS) panel I moderated towards the end of the first day. We brought together Ilya Sukhar (@ilyasu) of Parse, Morgan Bickle (@morganbickle) of Kinvey, Marc Weil (@marcweil) of Cloudmine, Miko Matasumura (@mikojava) of Kii, Ty Amell (@tyamell) of StackMob James Tamplin (@jamestamplin) of Firebase to talk about the fast growing BaaS space. I kicked things off with some pretty standard stuff, by having each person introduce themselves and explain what they do. Next I asked them to explain what differentiates themselves from the other folks on the couch. After that, things started heating up when I brought up a discussion about BaaS pricing, from an earlier online discussion about the mertits of user, feature or pricing base upon number of API calls. The common approach is user or api based pricing, with Stackmob focused on feature based BaaS pricing. BaaS panel is actually really really interesting. Great line up.... read more.

Tags: BaaS, BaaS, CloudMine, Firebase, Kii, Kinvey, parse

Get A List Of All Classes At UC Berkeley With API Call

by on 02/25/2013

I see a lot of dead simple, yet meaningful uses of APIs come across my desk (I don’t have a desk, why do I keep saying this? ) each day. One I saw today is something every school, whether K-12, college or university should have. Using the UC Berkeley API, you can get a list of all departments: _curl -v -X GET "https://apis-dev. berkeley. edu/cxf/asws/department? departmentCode=a&app_id=309fe68e&app_key=51b9d67dc4f0501eed763822a641b17b"_ Then with the proper department code you can pull a list of classes: _curl -v -X GET "https://apis-dev. berkeley. edu/cxf/asws/classoffering? departmentCode=ARCH&app_id=your-id&app_key=your-key"_ With the proper keys, anyone can easily pull relevant UC Berkeley department and class data to use in website or app, or even populate a Google Spreadsheet for other purposes. The UC Berkeley API Management Portal is brand new, I’m still working on separate story regarding their approach, but I wanted to talk about how good it is to see such straightforward, valuable uses of an API at a leading university. This simple example is something you should be able to do by default at all schools across the country.... read more.

Tags: Classes, College, K-12, UC Berkeley, University

Exactly the API Strategy & Practice Conference I Envisioned

by on 02/25/2013

Its the Monday morning after the API Strategy & Practice Conference. The conference went off without a hitch, and was exactly the conference I envisioned when 3Scale first contacted me seven months ago about the idea of putting on the event.  In July of 2012 Steve Willmott the CEO and founder of 3Scale sent me an email stating:. we're thinking of finally getting round to organizing an API focused event (conference) which tries to help spread knowledge about API, promote good practice and broaden the API tent beyond what it is today. The aim would be an event which combined both "business and practice" - meaning one element which tackles critical topics such as business models, strategy, success stories etc. and another which is about "what can be done with APIs" and "how to make it happen technically". Closing with: The final important thing is we'd like it to be a very open event - with a range of supporters, speakers and attendees and - while vendors might sponsor - it wouldn't be a "vendor" event. To which I responded with: Sounds like a great idea to me. I'm in, and willing to help in any way I can. Of course I would be in.... read more.

Tags: 3Scale, API Strategy & Practice, Conference, Event


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