API management

It’s been a fun ride since joining Mashery in the early days of 2008 and being part of our growth and the success of our customers.  We’ve launched well over 200 API programs over the years, and I’ve had a front row seat to many of them.  Some of our client friends at those early customer projects have been promoted given the success of their visions.  That’s super rewarding to have been a part of. 

APIs aren't just changing business; they're changing how we work and interact with each other every day. They're creating new opportunities for partnerships and extending brands' reach and revenue, and executives from Marketing to IT need to understand how to use APIs to accelerate their companies and create new opportunities for growth.

We've seen tremendous activity in the API management space in the last few weeks with multiple acquisitions and a huge uptick in interest in all things API-related. But what exactly are APIs and why do they need to be managed? Our infographic below illustrates some of the background to this API phenomenon and how companies can successfully build there own revenue-generating platforms.

This guest post, written by Andy Thurai, originally appeared on ProgrammableWeb. Andy is the Chief Architect & Group CTO for the Intel unit responsible for Cloud/ Application security, API, Big Data, SOA and Mobile middleware solutions. You can follow him on Twitter at @AndyThurai.

Photo of Victoria Barret (Left) and Wendy Lea (Right) speaking at The Business of APIs conference in San Francisco last Fall. 

Wendy Lea fell in love with the idea of creating, driving and connecting the meaningful conversations between companies and their customers.

She found a home doing that as the CEO of Get Satisfaction, a community-based platform that helps companies engage with their customers and in turn, gain product insight and enhanced customer loyalty.

This guest post, written by Andy Thurai, originally appeared on Programmableweb. Andy is the Chief Architect & Group CTO for the Intel unit responsible for Cloud/ Application security, API, Big Data, SOA and Mobile middleware solutions. You can follow him on Twitter at @AndyThurai.

See how Mashery's API Management Platform empowers you to manage the three essential elements of a successful API:  your partners, your APIs as products, and traffic.  This video features partner portals from ESPN, TomTom, and CarePass by Aetna.

Photo courtesy of zegosoft.com

I recently discussed what data/content enterprises can open up to the public through APIs.  This week, I want to discuss the customer and/or partner API tier.  This tier covers data that is too important to the enterprise to be made public, but is very useful to its customers and/or partners. 

A few weeks ago, I wrote about an API strategy specific to enterprise needs.  The strategy discussed in that post is one of dividing data into tiers.  Large companies have virtual landfills full of data, but not all company data is the same.  Some is public, some is for customers only and some is for internal use only.  The API strategy should reflect that.  It should have different tiers that are meant for different users.

Photo courtesy of apievangelist.com

We are clearly far past the point of having to explain the benefits of API management and services, but there are still specific aspects where more attention is merited. In particular, partners.

In 2013, Learning how to enable your business with APIs is a common theme among enterprise IT departments and also among business. Enterprises are seeing that the current state of SOA Governance is headed towards extinction. These enterprises face a new kind of tension: the app and API economies on the one hand, where enterprises drive new revenue streams by (gulp) publishing corporate data APIs for third-party developers to use, and SOA on the other, where tight governance is the name of the game. But the loose coupling in RESTful web services forces a discipline all its own.

My first Mashery recruiting assignment came last year. When recruiting for an expansion stage technology startup that provides a product that most people aren't entirely sure of, you need to be tremendously compelling in your first message.  This was challenging because I always found myself first having to explain what an API was and then why an API management solution was so important.

Last week, Mashery Platform Strategy Director, Chuck Freedman, wrote about a few strategies to help your API platform achieve its business goals.  This is part two of that post, covering strategies 4-6 from Chuck’s Business of APIs talk, which he presented earlier this fall. 

4.  Establishing Effective Partner Engagement

On Friday, Part I of this series covered the broad strokes of what is one of the integration spaces’ pivotal annual gatherings, Gartner’s Application, Architecture Delivery and Integration Summit (AADI). This show sets the coming year’s tone for application integration at Fortune 500 companies, and to a degree for the integration space as a whole. At the last two shows, that tone has been spelled out clearly: A-P-I.

It has been a busy year for API Management with lots of new players and new types of API products. What does it mean for APIs going into 2013? 

As a larger cross-section of businesses see the value of APIs, API management platforms will become even more important. Imperative to any API Management effort are five areas: design, documentation, analytics, access and uptime.