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nomossoftware nomos-software.com Encouraging and Supporting Developers who adopt your API API Strategy, Amsterdam, March 2014 David Garry, CTO [email protected]

API Strategy Slides - Supporting Developers in Adopting APIs

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Slides presented by David Garry (CTO, Nomos Software) at the API Strategy conference in Amsterdam, March 2014 ("APIs in Financial Services" track). Open banking and APIs provide new mechanisms for delivering mobile and online digital banking services. But IT teams and developers encounter many hurdles in adopting new interfaces and APIs. Developers are key in the online digital services / API value chain. If you create hurdles for developers, you run the risk of alienating them and you block your route to revenue. The slides explain some of the hurdles encountered by developers, and suggest how they can be addressed effectively through providing Smart API Support Environments.

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Page 1: API Strategy Slides - Supporting Developers in Adopting APIs

nomossoftware nomos-software.com

Encouraging and Supporting Developers who adopt your API

API Strategy, Amsterdam, March 2014

David Garry, CTO

[email protected]

Page 2: API Strategy Slides - Supporting Developers in Adopting APIs

www.nomos-software.comCopyright © Nomoséire Limited 2014 trading as Nomos Software nomossoftware

Banking is evolving – API explosion

• Number of financial services public web APIs deployed in 2012 increased more than 250% year over year - rapidly moving trend.

• By 2016 50% of banks in 'The Banker's’ top 1,000 world banks will have launched a public web apiplatform.

Gartner Nov 2013 Digital banking and the Role of APIs, App Stores and Apps.

• Telcos will be our future bankshttp://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/28075-the-telco-banks-of-the-futu

• Connectivity and convenience now expected

• By 2016 3X devices per person. 21 billion devices on the planet)

Innovation outside banks

Customer behaviour

21 billion devices

What is driving change?

José-manuel Benito, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/s, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Human-evolution-man.png

Page 3: API Strategy Slides - Supporting Developers in Adopting APIs

www.nomos-software.comCopyright © Nomoséire Limited 2014 trading as Nomos Software nomossoftware

What does this mean for banks?

Gartner again: Banks CIOs need to :

Create an open banking strategy in 2014 if this has not yet being developed• Launch one to two public web APIs

by late 2014• Launch a customer app store by

2015.

APIs, apps and app stores will be central to the way banks deliver digital banking.

Open Banking provides the head of retail banking, commercial or

investment services with the ability to create new methods of

interaction, value and service delivery through API platforms,

apps and app stores

Banks need an excellent API delivery process

Page 4: API Strategy Slides - Supporting Developers in Adopting APIs

www.nomos-software.comCopyright © Nomoséire Limited 2014 trading as Nomos Software nomossoftware

Banking Case Study

Help > 10 large European banks roll out new payments

interfaces to commercial customers

Supporting IT teams in 45 countries

Poor responses

Poor testing

What we encountered

Poor support

• APIs not designed for easy adoption. Poor error responses causing frequent confusion

• APIs and API integrations are poorly tested and unfit for public adoption

• API support is poor: documentation in numerous locations, doesn’t match systems, changes frequently. Online support is fragmented, slow and often out of date

+

What we do

Similar issues with many public APIs

Page 5: API Strategy Slides - Supporting Developers in Adopting APIs

www.nomos-software.comCopyright © Nomoséire Limited 2014 trading as Nomos Software nomossoftware

Poor Responses

Day 1

Developer tinkers for a while - can‘t resolve problem.

Step 1

Day 16

Developer tries sending API request. Error identified. Immediate response. Doesn‘t diagnose problem.

Developer posts message on internet forum asking for advice.

Support team posts reply with some suggestions13 messages later, 4 issues fixed so far...but still not working.

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

API still not working...

For details of developer / support trail messages from Nov 6 to Nov 22 see: https://developer.mastercard.com/portal/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=53248131&focusedCommentId=57704512#comment-57704512

• Poor response codes / messages make it very difficult for API user to interpret why an API Request failed

• This message trail is taken from the MasterCard Developer Portal. After 16 days and 13 messages later, the developer still does not know why her request failed

Page 6: API Strategy Slides - Supporting Developers in Adopting APIs

www.nomos-software.comCopyright © Nomoséire Limited 2014 trading as Nomos Software nomossoftware

Poor Responses

Fine grained control of the response message and response code is invaluable in educating API users

Twilio call for verbose error messages

Payments gateway ‘limits’ responses

Bank rejects 10,000 payments

Google API ‘Invalid Value’ response

Bank rejected all 10,000 payments requests if the mandate date for one payment was dated in the past

Payments Gateway provider limits (i.e. controls) information in the API responses for security reasons

https://www.twilio.com/engineering/2014/02/05/better-error-messages

Page 7: API Strategy Slides - Supporting Developers in Adopting APIs

www.nomos-software.comCopyright © Nomoséire Limited 2014 trading as Nomos Software nomossoftware

Poor Testing

http://blog.parasoft.com/bid/119041/Infographic-API-Integrity-How-Buggy-Are-Today-s-APIs

APIs and their integrations are badly tested

Testing specialist Parasoft, 2013 report

SaaS payments testing specialist, XMLdation, identifies issues in 70% of messages from sample of 10,000

www.xmldation.com

Page 8: API Strategy Slides - Supporting Developers in Adopting APIs

www.nomos-software.comCopyright © Nomoséire Limited 2014 trading as Nomos Software nomossoftware

Poor Support

Developers like support that enables continuous

iteration

Limitation of Internet Support Forums

• Message trails can span days/weeks. Answers not provided in real time.

• Level of participation of the community determines the quality of the forum.

• Information goes out of date. Need maintenance to remove information that is no longer relevant.

Poor documentation, slow responses Two of the reasons why Facebook API won ‘Worst API’ in developer survey http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/11/facebook-wins-worst-api-in-developer-survey

Page 9: API Strategy Slides - Supporting Developers in Adopting APIs

www.nomos-software.comCopyright © Nomoséire Limited 2014 trading as Nomos Software nomossoftware

Poor Support

Slow response time

Multiple sources of documentationDocumentation for SEPA payments messaging is spread across 4 documents (ISO20022 / European Payments Council / EBA Clearing / Individual Bank)

12 month response timehttps://forum.hootsuite.com/hootsuite/topics/google_plus_scheduled_photo_post_not_working

Page 10: API Strategy Slides - Supporting Developers in Adopting APIs

www.nomos-software.comCopyright © Nomoséire Limited 2014 trading as Nomos Software nomossoftware

Smart API Support Environments Resolve these Problems

Report meaningful, useful (error) information to API user

Smart API Support Environments = Sandboxes that improve the API User Experience

Learning thru trial and error

Immediate contextual feedback

Integrated sandbox and documentation

Are actively maintained

Indepth testing

Features

Not ‘static’ API documentation spread across multiple locations

Captures support team’s expert knowledge, old and incorrect information is removed, is updated for new releases

Supports

API user discovers everything about how the API works

Covers all error scenarios – simulates responses. No surprises when API user sends requests to real systems.

Page 11: API Strategy Slides - Supporting Developers in Adopting APIs

www.nomos-software.comCopyright © Nomoséire Limited 2014 trading as Nomos Software nomossoftware

Contextualised Feedback and Integrated Documentation

Pin-point the location in the API request/response where an error is occurring

Name the error and link to API documentation, so user can root-cause and understand the problem.

Responses are contextualised

And linked to documentation

Page 12: API Strategy Slides - Supporting Developers in Adopting APIs

www.nomos-software.comCopyright © Nomoséire Limited 2014 trading as Nomos Software nomossoftware

Best Practices

The best supported APIs have very good support environments

Smart support environments provide a living portal where sandbox and API documentation are merged, so developer can read about, run and test the API 24/7 all in one place

Page 13: API Strategy Slides - Supporting Developers in Adopting APIs

www.nomos-software.comCopyright © Nomoséire Limited 2014 trading as Nomos Software nomossoftware

Smart API Support - Benefits

Fron Manfred Bortenschlager speaking at Operator API Seminar in Mobile World Congress, Barcelona 2014

http://www.scoop.it/t/api-mag/p/4016630311/2014/02/26/operator-apis-what-developers-think

Reduce Support Costs, API owners

Faster ‘time to learn’, API users

API user ‘retention’

Page 14: API Strategy Slides - Supporting Developers in Adopting APIs

www.nomos-software.comCopyright © Nomoséire Limited 2014 trading as Nomos Software nomossoftware

Bank Systems with

APIs

Bank Systems with

APIsDevelopersDevelopers

What this means for banks…

Developers sit in the value chain between API owners and end customers – block developers and you block revenue

Encourage and support developers with Smart API Support Environments

Banks and other organisations need an excellent API delivery mechanism as they open up APIs into their systems, and compete for ‘developer’ market share

Corporate Treasuries and Retail Customers

Corporate Treasuries and Retail Customers

Online / Mobile

Banking Services

Online / Mobile

Banking Services

=

Page 15: API Strategy Slides - Supporting Developers in Adopting APIs

David Garry, CTO

[email protected]

nomossoftware coming soon: apisupport.ionomos-software.com