The Exadel Blog

How APIs Are Exposing Value and Changing the Nature of the Internet

In 2012, the client-​​server par­a­digm, which has dom­i­nated ap­pli­ca­tion ar­chi­tec­ture — and the modern Web ar­chi­tec­ture which is its most modern in­car­na­tion — over the past twenty years, is giving ground to a more broadly dis­trib­uted client-​​cloud ap­proach. As this shift hap­pens, it promises to un­lock value in pre­vi­ously under-​​utilized en­ter­prise data and media con­tent. The cat­a­lyst for this change is to be found in the ex­plo­sion of ap­pli­ca­tion pro­gram­ming in­ter­faces, or APIs, which ex­pose re­sources within and be­yond the cor­po­rate fire­wall and re­de­fine the on­line economy.

The Web has grown up with servers pro­viding data to desktop or laptop com­puters. Recent changes have seen this model blown apart, splin­tering both ends of the client-​​server sce­nario. On the client side, 2011 saw mo­bile de­vices ex­ceed their desktop brethren as the pre­dom­i­nant mode of ac­cess to the cloud for the first time, while the Web server is be­coming “thinner” as more con­tent ar­rives from sec­ondary sources often spread across mul­tiple web do­mains. This is the client-​​cloud par­a­digm: mul­tiple sources of cloud-​​based con­tent and ser­vices de­liv­ered to a di­verse set of mo­bile devices.

An es­sen­tial part of the emer­gence of this par­a­digm is the ex­pan­sion of cloud APIs. Although cloud APIs have been around for over a decade, 2012 is likely to be the “Year of the API”, marking the be­gin­ning of an era of pro­lif­er­a­tion in API usage.

Simply put, an API of­fers an ap­pli­ca­tion a con­tract in which a set of ser­vices is de­fined and from which they can be re­li­ably ac­cessed. The con­tract de­fines the calls to be made and spec­i­fies re­sulting re­sponses. Thus, an API lets any ap­pli­ca­tion con­sume its func­tion­ality, data, and media as long as the app ac­cepts the “con­tract terms”.

As cloud APIs drive strategy in the con­nected economy, a new busi­ness model is emerging, with com­pa­nies racing to cap­i­talize on ex­posing their re­sources in myriad ways, both in­ter­nally and pub­licly, for ac­cess across all kinds of de­vices. Businesses that fail to do so will be at a disadvantage.

Step One: Private APIs

On the in­side, APIs help busi­nesses im­prove ac­cess to con­tent among em­ployees and partner com­pa­nies with the aim of max­i­mizing the value hidden in cor­po­rate data and media. Often, in the past, Microsoft Excel has served as the “de­vel­op­ment plat­form” en­abling en­ter­prise busi­ness units to cus­tomize ac­cess to cor­po­rate data. But, the mo­bile con­sumer­iza­tion of the en­ter­prise and the greater ac­cess to simple tools for more pow­erful app cre­ation is changing this landscape.

Private APIs are not for in­ternal con­sump­tion alone. “In our ex­pe­ri­ence, the biggest and most far-​​reaching im­pact of many pri­vate APIs is when com­pa­nies use their API in­ter­nally to build public apps,” say Daniel Jacobson, Greg Brail, and Dan Woods in APIs: A Strategy Guide (O’Reilly, 2011). “Using an API in this way tremen­dously in­creases ef­fi­cien­cies in ex­tending prod­ucts or fea­tures for cus­tomers. At a time when many com­pa­nies are strug­gling to pro­duce iPhone apps, com­pa­nies with APIs have al­ready re­leased mul­tiple ver­sions of iPhone, Android, iPad, and other mo­bile apps.”

For ex­ample, National Public Radio uses a pri­vate, pow­erful API to in­ter­nally de­velop mo­bile apps, while of­fering a public API that, de­spite of­fering more lim­ited con­tent rights, is serving a stag­gering 3.2 bil­lion sto­ries per month as of October 2011.

Step Two: Public APIs

Outside the en­ter­prise, APIs are gaining ground – and even celebrity – in nu­merous high-​​profile ex­am­ples. One of the best-​​known API suc­cess sto­ries comes from Amazon: Its cloud ser­vice APIs let out­siders ac­cess the company’s mas­sive data cen­ters. Twitter, with its de­cep­tively simple 140-​​character micro-​​blogging model, ex­ploded thanks to its API play as API usage rose as high as 10 times its Web site traffic. (You prob­ably read and write your tweets in an app using their API, rather than on the Twitter web page.) Facebook’s Graph API has spawned an in­dustry of app de­vel­op­ment to sup­port its hun­dreds of mil­lions of users.

These are not edge cases ei­ther. The col­lec­tion of avail­able ser­vices is mush­rooming, with the API repos­i­tory ProgrammableWeb​.com –- an Alcatel-​​Lucent sub­sidiary since 2010 –- listing over 4,000 public APIs. Some are of­fered by com­pa­nies whose cen­tral ser­vices are de­liv­ered only via API, such as StackMob, which pro­vides data­base and other back-​​end ser­vices. Others, such as Box​.net or Parse​.com, pro­vide APIs as an im­por­tant al­ter­na­tive means of ac­cess to their ser­vices. Still others, such as MUNI, which runs the city trains and buses of San Francisco, simply offer an­cil­lary ser­vices via an API, such as train/​bus ar­rival pre­dic­tion, to sup­port their pri­mary mission.

If You Build It, Developers Will Come

The API economy is driven by a key in­no­va­tion: Cloud APIs leverage the ex­per­tise of out­side ap­pli­ca­tion de­vel­opers, crowd-​​sourcing the ac­cess to con­tent within the well-​​defined con­straints of the API con­tract. The cre­ators and man­agers of data and media re­sources, no matter how ex­pert, will not al­ways be fully aware of how broadly their data can be used. By ex­posing con­tent re­sources for pack­aging into any number of in­no­v­a­tive apps, the API en­ables a cre­ative re-​​use of the con­tent, in­cluding unan­tic­i­pated mash-​​ups that could ex­po­nen­tially in­crease ex­po­sure of the company’s data and busi­ness logic re­sources in a se­cure way de­fined by the API.

FreeScore, for ex­ample, was able to use its in­ternal APIs along with mo­bile lo­ca­tion data, the Google map­ping API, and the APIs of the three major credit bu­reaus in its first mo­bile app, de­signed to give cus­tomers easy ac­cess to their credit scores. The app gives the con­sumer cru­cial data when shop­ping for a home, mort­gage, or in­terest rate. Users can also com­pare their scores to neigh­bor­hood av­erage scores using mo­bile location-​​based functionality.

“FreeScore used building blocks avail­able on the Web, and we were able to rapidly de­velop a mo­bile app with pow­erful func­tion­ality, one that was much more useful than we could have cre­ated without being able to get the ex­isting pieces in the Cloud. Merging of credit data from mul­tiple sources was prob­ably not en­vi­sioned by the people who wrote the APIs. It’s ex­citing to push the en­ve­lope of rapid de­vel­op­ment.” says mo­bile ar­chi­tect Andrey Harhots.

As eBay found when it ex­posed its APIs and en­gaged 850,000 de­vel­opers and as Facebook in­creas­ingly demon­strates with its mas­sive growth in Facebook ap­pli­ca­tions, if you build it, they — app de­vel­opers — will come.

Unleashed via API

In sum­mary, guerilla de­vel­op­ment by en­ter­prise cit­izen de­vel­opers and in­de­pen­dents, along with the strategic avail­ability of public and pri­vate APIs, is fu­eling a game-​​changing in­crease in pro­duc­tivity on the Web. Just as the com­pe­ti­tion be­tween bricks-​​and-​​mortar stores and ecom­merce has char­ac­ter­ized com­peting busi­ness models over the past 15 years, as the client-​​cloud par­a­digm con­tinues to emerge over the coming years, we will see a sim­ilar ten­sion be­tween those ser­vices con­tained within a single web­site or ap­pli­ca­tion and those that are un­leashed via API. Just as the prior struggle fa­vored the ap­proach with less fric­tion, so too will APIs grow more rapidly than ser­vices con­strained to a single de­livery mech­a­nism. Only this time, the change will come much faster.

References

• APIs: A Strategy Guide: Creating Channels with Application Programming Interfaces http://​shop​.or​eilly​.com/​p​r​o​d​u​c​t​/​0​6​3​6​9​2​0​0​2​1​2​2​3​.do
• Programmable Web (API repos­i­tory), http://​www​.pro​gram​ma​bleweb​.com
• Gartner Says Citizen Developers Will Build at Least 25 Percent of New Business Applications by 2014, http://​www​.gartner​.com/​i​t​/​p​a​g​e​.​j​s​p​?​i​d​=​1​7​4​4​514
• Tiggzi Mobile App Builder, http://​www​.tiggzi​.com

Originally pub­lished February 2012 as a PDF on the Exadel website.

Tags: API economy, APIs, citizen developer, client server, client-cloud, public APIs, white paper