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Introduction to Amplify Marketplace | 2 - Challenges

Applications and data are the driving force in today’s digital economy. To create compelling applications, APIs are essential.

For example, to include maps and routes in your application, you may use the Google Maps API. To process billing, you may use PayPal’s API. And a car buying application may use an insurance API to provide a better car buying experience.

APIs are the glue that connect disparate and related applications and data. They enable API providers and consumers to obtain more customers, thereby realizing a higher revenue growth.

There has been an exponential increase in the number of APIs that are driving digital business.

A study conducted by Forrester Consulting, on behalf of Axway, provided these results. 71% of those surveyed had 20 or more digital business projects in progress.

On an average, 257 APIs were published internally, and 188 APIs were published externally to support these digital initiatives.

The study also found that businesses are not experiencing the kind of results they had expected from their APIs

72% of those surveyed agreed that they expected their digital business to grow by 26% if they were able to increase API adoption.

This means an API program is essential in supporting successful business goals and objectives that are aligned to the digital strategy of an enterprise. This goes way beyond just using APIs as integration building blocks purely for system connectivity.

APIs enable business connectivity and innovation. The API program should constantly tie API delivery to business drivers. This traceability, from API products to business goals and drivers, will also determine how to measure the effectiveness of the program and keep it on track to provide meaningful results for future adaptations.

Here are some specific drivers and challenges.

  • Multiple business units build APIs in silos, building from scratch when similar APIs may have already been built by some other team.
  • This leads to needing central tracking and governance that adds more overhead.
  • Sometimes, home grown solutions may not be best to keep up with the user demands.
  • It is expensive to maintain fragmented and outdated portal solutions.
  • APIs, when shared externally to a wider audience, can lead to faster innovation.
  • Monetization of data, explicitly or through chargebacks, is a necessary step to tie business goals and API programs together in terms of their effectiveness.
  • Unmanaged and unsecured APIs pose a huge risk to the business from a security perspective.

APIs hosted on separate and disparate servers, or Gateways, give rise to many challenges due to API sprawl.

Challenges like:

  • Multiple portals and web sites with multiple credentials.
  • APIs cannot be viewed easily by function or use case.
  • Inconsistent user experience for, searching, subscribing, testing, comparing, and getting support for APIs.
  • Easily comparing API performance and usage across portals

This is the impact of API sprawl for the API Consumer. It also impacts application developers and business users.

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