The Dark Matter That Make APIs Work

by on 05/13/2013

I encounter many enterprise folks who dismiss APIs as nothing more that just one of the technical building blocks of SOA. Folks who, no matter how much I explain, will never see APIs beyond a technical specification and implementation. API Evangelist solely exists to shed light on not just the technology of APIs, but the equally important business and politics of the APIs. It is the business and political building blocks that help the concept of API grow beyond just its technical roots. An API won't find success just because you made a resource available via a URL. An API is successful because it is logically priced, possibly has revenue sharing, code samples to jumpstart integration and a support and resource network that a developer can tap into. An API is successful because it is open and self-service, but sensibly secured, providing a terms of service that benefit API owners, and developers, while also protecting the interests of end users. APIs bring together a unique blend of technology, business and politics into a transparent, self-service mix that can foster innovation. As someone who is heavily invested at the enterprise scope, it can be difficult to see things through this lens sometimes.... read more.

Tags: Enterprise, SOA

Potential for API Aggregators to Provide Valuable Industry Data

by on 05/13/2013

I've been tracking on a trend in the API space that I call API aggregation. Companies like Singly and Adigami are aggregating APIs into more meaningful API stacks, than any single API provider can deliver on their own. In my regular monitoring, I'm always on the hunt for examples of the benefits of API Aggregation, and last week I saw some pretty interesting payment gateway data being provided by payment API aggregator Spreedly--which definitely reflects the positive effects I'm looking to shine light on in the space.   Spreedly is a cloud based credit card vault that allows you to work with one or multiple payment gateways over time or simultaneously, and has published some pretty interesting analysis of failed transaction rates across multiple payment gateways. I'll let you head over to Spreedly to read the analysis. What I find interesting is that they are open to sharing this data with the public. This type of information sharing by API aggregator providers is critical to the overall health of the space.... read more.

Tags: Aggregation, Payments, Spreedly

My Talk Tomorrow Night at the Dallas-Forth Worth API Professionals Meetup

by on 05/13/2013

After looking through the list of folks who have RSVP'd for the DFW API Professionals Meetup in Dallas tomorrow night, it looks like an interesting mix of tech and business folk. The tech group is definitely the larger, with a mix of mobile, web and enterprise. The business folks look like a mix of VC, project manager, marketing and startups. I'm heading out to Dallas in the morning, and I am spending my afternoon preparing my talk. When it comes to meetups, I like to wait until the last moment, see who has RSVP'd and shift my talk to being more tech, more business or more API 101 depending on the audience. I like the mix of people I'm seeing RSVP'd for tomorrow night. I'm pulling together a talk from some of my regular material, but updating for what is going on right now.... read more.

Tags: Dallas, Fort Worth, Meetup, Talks

The White House Releases An Open Data Strategy

by on 05/11/2013

Photo Credit - White House President Obama issued an Executive Order this last week - Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information. A move that will signficantly define the fast growing API economy.  But before I dive into what this means for open data and APIs, I wanted to recap the last year of progress in Washington when it comes to open data and APIs. If you recall, in May of 2012, the White House issued the Memorandum on Building a 21st Century Digital Government, which provided federal agencies with a 12-month roadmap to get familiar the concept of possessing a healthy digital strategy, which involves taking a strategic approach to using social, cloud computing and mobile, with open data and APIs as the core. After reading the directive from the White House in 2012, I wrote Barack Obama Directs All Federal Agencies to Have an API, which is still one of the most viewed posts on API Evangelist, after The Secret to Amazons Success Internal APIs. While I am a believer in both APIs and the potential of healthy government leadership, I'm also very skeptical of blind API faith and of our federal government to deliver on open data.... read more.

Tags: Digital Strategy, Federal Government, Open Data Policy

When API Success Signals Begin Working Against You

by on 05/10/2013

Curently I'm immersed in discovering, vetting and tracking on signals that show me which companies are trending in the API space. I'm looking for signals that will tell me which companies are making movements on a week to week basis, and when the blogosphere and developer communities are buzzing about these companies and technologies. Three very important signals I use are blogs, twitter and Github. These tools provide me with great signals I can use to tune into what a company is doing, when they push code, write a story or tweet about it. They also provide me with signals of when developers are engaging with API owners, because they follow on Twitter and download, fork, favorite and follow Github repositories. However, in some scenarios a companies blogs, twitter and Github accounts can also tell me when a company has given up and has run out of money or just stopped putting energy and resources into a project. An example of this is with a company I came across during my monitoring last week, called RESTful Labs. RESTful Labs has all the eye candy to draw me in. I mean they have REST in their name, and they build tools for developers! RESTful Labs provides API analytics tools for developers.... read more.

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Get To Know Which Languages Your API Developers Are Using

by on 05/08/2013

Accounting API platform Xero has been taking a deeper look into the languages that their developers are using when integrating with the Xero API. Currently there are 1,600 active applications communicating with the Xero API, from a mix of Xero add-on partners to custom integrations engineered by 3rd party developers.  But which programming languages were they using? To create a snapshot of what tools developers are using, Xero needed to find the best source to obtain this data. Xero doesn't ask developers which platform they use upon registration, and since Xero doesn't require any sort of user agent or other identifying signature, it was difficult to know where to best acquire the data they needed. The next best place to look for this data, is with the code samples themselves. It would be nice, if Xero code samples were hosted using Github where they could track downloads, forks, followers, etc. But the best they had, was the page views from the pages for each code library, within the Xero developer area. Using this approach, Xero was able to extract some pretty interesting data about which programming languages developers were clicking on.... read more.

Tags: Accounting, Developer Profiling, Programming Languages, Xero

Twitters Developer Area is More Embeddable Than API

by on 05/08/2013

Does anyone else notice the evolution of the Twitter developer area? The site has taken a page from the LinkedIn playbook and become more about embeddable buttons, badges and widgets than about APIs.   Granted, you can click on documentation and get at the REST API v 1. 1.  I'm not saying this is a good or bad thing.  I'm a big supporter of embeddable strategies for API providers. I think that evolution is very telling of Twitter's API strategy and what type of "developer" they want to support with the API. Whether or not you agree with Twitter's overall API strategy, there is a lot to learn from their approach to API driven embeddable tools.... read more.

Tags: Embeddable, Twitter

Overview Of Backend as a Service (BaaS) White Paper

by on 05/08/2013

I've been working on expanding the amount of research and writing I can do via API Evangelist lately. In the last couple weeks I rolled out new projects in three areas: API Toolkits, API Trends, API Priorities. This new approach is helping me focus on the areas I think are most important or exciting to the API space and generate as much, high quality news, analysis and white papers for the API space as I can. The first of my white papers, using my new approach is finished. The new paper is called Overview Of The Backend as a Service (BaaS) Space, and is the aggregation of all my research into the BaaS space. Here is a breakdown of the white paper: What is BaaS? How Does BaaS Differ From IaaS and PaaS? What Are The Benefits of BaaS? What Can You Build With BaaS? Who Are The Top BaaS Providers? What Are The Common Building Blocks of BaaS? What Are the Common Approaches to BaaS Pricing? What Are The Other Approaches to BaaS Pricing? Who Are The Other BaaS Providers? Watch Out As 1000lb Gorillas Set Their Sights on BaaS Space! What Makes BaaS Relevant to APIs? The Future Is About Virtualized Mobile Operating Systems Investment in BaaS What Are The Opportunities in BaaS?... read more.

Tags: BaaS, Research, White Papers

Make Sure And Have Multiple KPIs For Your APIs

by on 05/07/2013

In the API space, we have to be constantly measuring and looking for signals that will help us understand where we should be focusing our resources, as part of an overall strategy. One of the ways we measure value within the world of APIs (and business) is using KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators. Using KPIs we strive to measure the Return on our Investment (ROI), as we gamble with the technology, business and politics of APIs. One approach to quantifying the value, that has emerged from API providers, API service providers and the tech blogosphere is using the "API call". It is simple. You launch an API, so you quantify it by the number of times someone calls it. Kind of like a page view, right? Out of this eyeball derived reality(which is silly since APIs aren't for humans), the API space has become obsessed with the number of API calls, resulting in what is known as the API billionaires club. The Billionaires Club is an elite group of tech providers who have billions of calls per month on their API. It is a pretty simple algorithm. Have API + Have Billions of Requests = Your In The Billionaires Club. And if you are in the billionaires club, you are successful.  End of calculation.... read more.

Tags: Billionaires Club, GitHub, KPI, Netflix, Signals

API Enabled Toys For Our Children

by on 05/07/2013

When it comes to the Internet of Things, APIs have a bright future. I tend to focus on the greater good when showcasing APIs, but occasionally I get tripped up by the market potential of APIs. I came across the Baby Toys Get an App Extension post in the New York Times this week, and I can't think of a more lucrative market for API interaction via a smart phone, than a baby or toddler's toys. First, can you image every mom or dad in America with access to their kids toys via their iPhone. Talk about an emotional connection. You have a real-time chord that is attached to a parents heart string. So if you are at work, missing your child that is at home, in day care, or even when you are at home with them, you have the opportunity to interact with your child via their crib, playstation or other toy? I'm not even going to start profiling the toys and the opportunity here. Second, can you imagine the data available for toy, clothing and other manufacturers? You have a daily, permanent connection between a parent and their child via the toys that are most important to a child each day, and by default, what is important to the parent.... read more.

Tags: Fisher Price, Internet-of-Things, IPhone, Smart Phones, Toys


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