Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2022. Read them in this 14th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
8 API-related Trends to Keep an Eye on in 2022
By Frank
Kilcommins, API Technical Evangelist, SmartBear
Things are always changing. API traffic now dominates the web, and technology
analysts expect API investments to increase by 37% in 2022. The expected increases are
significant, given that companies spent an estimated $1.2 trillion on digital
transformation in 2019 and 2020. This may be the tip of the iceberg, as only 13%
of leaders think their organizations are ready for the digital age. As technology continues to dominate our
personal and professional lives, APIs become increasingly important.
Market and industry motions also contribute to API growth. Open banking,
open travel, open insurance, and interoperability standards within healthcare, all
powered through APIs, drive the increasing relevance of privacy and regulation,
which plays a vital role in the API landscape.
Technology trends like Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things
(IoT), low-code and no-code initiatives, and the continued migration of large technology
estates from on-premise to the cloud contribute to a proliferation of APIs.
Companies want to participate in the digital economy. The needs for
speed, transparency, and cost effectiveness all play a part. As APIs evolve
from being a technical item IT teams take responsibility for, to the
cornerstone of how we exchange value, what should we be keeping an eye on in
the coming year?
1) API-first
will tip the scales to dominate delivery approaches
API-first is a simple approach that focuses on every product and service
(a.k.a. capability) being offered as an API-first. APIs are catalysts for delivering
digital experiences and are now the dominant form of traffic. Companies need to
strive for longevity in their API products.
ROI on APIs is no longer limited to APIs going beyond the boundaries of
the organization. Organizational leaders realize the majority of APIs they
create are driving internal DevOps, automation, and AI initiatives.
Within many organizations, scrutiny on API
design and API Developer Experience (DX) only kicks in for external APIs. That
mentality hinders the API-first mindset. What really pushes API-first forward
is a consistent, standardized approach - regardless of the consumer.
Too often, API design, standardization, and Developer Experience (DX)
are seen as necessary only for APIs exposed outside of the organization. If you
apply an API-first approach to smaller businesses and technical initiatives,
you enable organizations to learn the ropes for a full-scale API product
mindset. This facilitates the transparent value proposition of each capability
prior to making larger investments. It also contributes to a loosely coupled
and composable architecture.
The benefits of API-first are becoming widely understood and appreciated.
The adoption of API-first and design-first should be the dominant approach for
successful API delivery.
2) API specification
adoption will increase
Companies must achieve the right balance between speed, agility, and
security when they deliver digital assets. If companies take a fragmented
approach to API delivery, API chaos may paralyze their digital evolution.
Undocumented APIs are a common pain point for many organizations. API
specifications bring many practical benefits within a digitally transforming
company.
The main benefits of API specifications include:
- Enabling consistency for consumers
- Addressing technology debt without breaking
your contracts
- Enhanced security and agility
- Reduced communication and knowledge sharing
burden
- Increased interoperability between components
and tooling
Standardization and governance are a significant challenge for businesses
scaling their API delivery approach. Specifications provide automated ways to
add resiliency to API delivery programs and support improved productivity when
they're adopted by tooling eco-systems.
3) API management
is evolving
As APIs evolve from pure technical artifacts to products, the role of
API management is also evolving.
Initial API management efforts were focused on technical management of
APIs, including publishing, access, security, throttling, monitoring, and reporting.
It did little to support other stages of the API lifecycle such as ideation,
design, development, test, and documentation, or the product-orientated mindset
of modern API delivery.
APIs are built to be consumed - they have no value if they aren't. API management
tooling therefore needs to offer API providers the ability to deliver consistent
products by acting as a unified catalog of a business' API estate. It should
also be consumer focused, which leads to improved support for the marketing,
rollout, and adoption of products. The next step is to make it easier for
consumers to discover and seamlessly engage with API products in a consumer-centric
environment.
API management shouldn't constrain the way APIs are designed, developed,
and deployed. It's difficult to be all things to all people, and management
platforms should keep this in mind. Standardization around the definition of
the API lifecycle and the enablement of API interoperation for the lifecycle
phases, should empower organizations to complement API management tooling with
other specialized offerings. This will lead to better quality APIs.
4) Multi-protocol
is the new norm
There's a variety of API styles and technologies available to teams, which
leads to the emergence of multi-protocol usage. A mix of integration patterns
and API styles provides a multifaceted integration landscape.
In order to serve optimal experiences and deliver on digital immediacy
demands, many companies use a combination of API and integration styles which deliver
immersive experiences for the end users. With APIs, there is no one-size-fits-all
approach.
Figure 1 - SmartBear State of Quality API report 2021 - 81% of respondents use
more than one protocol
Productivity, team morale, and cognitive load are affected when a team
deals with multiple styles and protocols, particularly by context switching between
tools. So, there's a push within the tooling space to support multiple
protocols in a way that meets teams where they are. By integrating directly
into development environments (IDE), or by supporting team workflows through SDKs,
CLIs, and consistent tooling user interfaces, tooling vendors can help teams focus
on functional or feature goals, without being held back by the tooling itself.
5) The
main challenge in API program success: people
Getting APIs right is a socio-technical challenge. The organization's
team structure and the culture side of the equation can be either fundamental
impediments or key enablers for an API program. This phenomenon is reflected in
Conway's Law, which states that organizations design systems
that mirror their own communication structures.
We've made considerable strides in addressing the technical challenge of
API delivery and consumption. Now we need to make concerted efforts to address
the mindset of the people involved. For organizations looking to get the most
from their API program and prevent stagnation, investment is best spent on
addressing the organizational side of API delivery, rather than the technical
side.
Figure 2 - Technology focus dominates rather than people and process. (This
graphic reflects Integrated Automation but is also true for APIs.)
6) Convenience
technology may soon bite back
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) helped many organizations react quickly
to the changed environment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the widespread shift
to remote working. Many organizations hastily deployed bots on top of legacy
applications, processing and directly interacting with the graphical user
interfaces of the systems by mimicking real users. Those beneficial short-term
gains may be misinterpreted by IT executives as a cheaper, faster, and more
consistent way to solve scalability challenges.
RPA is a useful tool in the enterprise toolkit, but it also has the
potential to mask technology debt. This could lead to brittle legacy
architectures which underpin the core offering of organizations. To prevent
this, RPA should be properly governed and part of an integrated strategy.
If RPA was introduced as a temporary workaround to short-term challenges,
it's imperative for IT leaders and architects to treat its implementation as such.
They also need to develop the underlying core enterprise landscape to ensure
architectural resiliency. Without this, they risk classifying their RPA
implementation as "innovative," which means the organization will fail to achieve
its digital transformation goals (as shown in the "people challenge" outlined
above) and API program maturity.
7) Open
standards are becoming increasingly relevant
The move toward openness, consistent data sharing, and regulation around
consent is a global trend. Open banking has changed the operation of financial
services companies and banks, shifting the power from the traditional
custodians toward the consumers. This enables consumers to shop around for
better deals or the more innovative experiences offered by many fintechs.
The same democratization is also happening in other sectors, such as open
insurance, open finance, open travel, and the fast healthcare interoperability
resources (FHIR) specification within healthcare.
These industries will benefit from embracing the growth of the API ecosystem.
Consumers are much more aware of data ownership, so standards around data
exchange, the security of the exchange mechanisms (e.g., the APIs), and owner consent
are more relevant than ever.
Newer initiatives can learn from open banking and adopt early the
customer-centric mindset of APIs as products and API users as customers. The
open standards, and industries themselves, will level the playing field and
promote standardization of minimal requirements. Institutions will learn when
to differentiate themselves from competitors by focusing on their unique
products and services.
With this increasing move toward open standards, the OpenAPI Initiative
(OAI) has created several special interest groups (SIGs) which focus on the
usage, adoption, and potential enhancement of the OpenAPI specification (OAS) for
specific industries, such as finance and travel.
It will be interesting to watch how these groups continue to operate. They
offer a compelling opportunity to move OAS and the OAI community forward. This
will probably influence multiple API specifications, not just OpenAPI.
8) APIs
drive Artificial Intelligence, low-code, and no-code
Smart speakers are here to stay. Voice and chat assistants are used more
than ever, reflecting the success of human to machine interaction. It's not
just limited to voice-assistant devices - applications leveraging speech-to-text
technology have exploded over the past few years. APIs continue to grow, as
they're the conduit of value between voice- and chat-enabled devices and the
underlying functional offering.
Figure 3 - Smart speaker frequency of use in the USA, UK, and Germany
The indirect importance of APIs is not just limited to the voice
technology trend. It's also true for most AI capabilities. Low-code and no-code
are gaining more traction within the industry at large, and these platforms are fuelled by the APIs behind the visual builders.
However, while
it's useful to have quick automation around processes, companies are still
getting to grips with how to deliver no-code solutions. Growth will continue in
this area, as will a realization of the important role APIs play. Expect to see
efforts to improve governance and standardization around no-code and low-code
in the coming year.
The decade of APIs
All the hype surrounding
new digital ecosystems, new business models, new platforms, new marketplaces, and
new as-a-service value propositions all point to one single common
denominator: more APIs!
While humans may
be waiting for the twenties to start in earnest, it has all the hallmarks of
the "decade of the API" with indicators suggesting that the API market will
continue to grow, especially with the accelerated demands on organizations from
the pandemic.
##
ABOUT THE
AUTHOR
Frank Kilcommins
is API Technical Evangelist at SmartBear. He has over 15 years of experience in
the technology industry, his roles spanning from software engineering to
enterprise architecture. His mission is to inspire, engage with, and support
the API community as well as SmartBear customers across the end-to-end API
development lifecycle and management space. Prior to joining SmartBear, Frank's
most recent roles have been focused on API-led digital transformations and
architecture modernization within multi-national enterprises.