Best Practices: The Role of API Management

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Best Practices

The Role of API Management

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The API Economy

--Based on directory of 6,000 web APIs listed at ProgrammableWeb, May 2012

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APIs are an Effect, not a Cause

• Extend/embed your brand

• Enable new channels/devices to reach:– Partners– App Developers– Employees (BYOD)

• Create stickiness for your products or services

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Extend your brand

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Accelerate New Channels

• In the beginning companies reached their customers using:– The phone– Snail mail– Advertising– Yellow Pages

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Accelerate New Channels

• Then they invested in web sites

• Initially just marketing themselves

• Then eCommerce• Those that didn’t….aren’t

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Accelerate New Channels

• With the cellphone and mobile internet came more pressures

• Companies extended their web presence with mobile (WAP) versions of their existing site

• Limited success

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Accelerate New Channels

• The iPhone effect• Mobile web browsers are not

adequate…• ..so companies build their

own Apps to provide a rich experience to their consumers

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Accelerate New Channels

• If building your own App helps reach your own consumers….

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Accelerate New Channels

• If building your own App helps reach your own consumers….

• A Developer Community building tens, hundreds, or even thousands of Apps…

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Accelerate New Channels

• If building your own App helps reach your own consumers….

• A Developer Community building tens, hundreds, or even thousands of Apps…

• Can reach consumers in ways you can’t even dream of

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Accelerate New Channels

• Building the enterprise Website reached 20% of your market…

• For 80% of your total development investment

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Accelerate New Channels

• Building APIs reaches the remaining 80% of your market.

• For only 20% of your total development investment

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Accelerate new channels

• APIs = – more apps,– more developers,– more partners

• Through Federation

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Create stickiness

• Customers are fickle

• Exposing your business in greater ecosystems [via APIs] builds dependence on your product or service

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Review

• Extend/embed your brand– Use well defined APIs to control the rendering of your syndicated/shared content

• Enable new channels/devices– Significantly reduce technical hurdles to business integration of partners or new

sales channels– Use federation to rapidly expand the eco-system of your business

• Create stickiness to your products or services– Make your products or services relevant in related activities to build dependence

on your offering

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Review

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Best Practices

• Build the right API - Your API must be a product

• Build it the right way – Build from the outside in

• Run it successfully – Protect, secure, Manage, Measure

• Share it aggressively – Publish, support, syndicate

• -> Build an API Platform

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The Enterprise API Platform

• Think about your customers’ needs, the apps that will meet those needs, and the APIs that will be needed to support them

• There will likely be a technology and capability gap between the APIs and your backend systems

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1 - Rehashing mashups?

• There are hundreds of technologies out there to build APIs

• Two key factors:– The number, type and

abilities of development resources at your disposal.

– The presence of, and complexity of, the backend services and data sources

• Having backend services (SOA) greatly increases your time to market

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2 - Sandbox

• The Sandbox should provide a simple test platform for developers.

• For sensitive data/transactions it may provide a dummy application front-end

• Could also support App verification

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3 - developer.yourcompany.com

• The Developer Portal is the focal point for your API initiative

• Describes the value of the API

• Hosts technical and legal documentation

• Support the developers• Lifecycle and workflow

of Apps and Apis

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4 – API Security and Management

• Support all non-functional requirements– API Security, incl. OAuth– Traffic Monitoring– QoS Management– Caching– App Management &

Provisioning– Policy and Plan

Management

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5 – Lifecycle Management

• Your API initiatives will have to integrate with your existing SDLC

• The dependencies on backend services and systems will drive the need for an integrated approach to lifecycle and operations management

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On-premise or in the Cloud

• The API Platform, or components of it are now available as a PaaS offering

• This allows you to accelerate time-to-market and lower your initial setup costs

Copyright © 2001-2012 SOA Software, Inc. All Rights Reserved. All content subject to confidentiality agreement between SOA Software and Customer.

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Product Overview

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SOA Governance & API Management

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Thanks…

• Alistair Farquharson, CTO, SOA Software• alistair.farquharson@soa.com• https://twitter.com/afarqu• @atmosphere_api • @SOASoftwareInc