Just as the Graphic User Interface (GUI) revolutionized businesses in the ’90s, Application Programming Interfaces (API) are revolutionizing business in this decade. GUI enabled average users to interact with software with little or no technical knowledge. Now APIs coupled with cheap data storage and cheap broadband networks enable non-technical users to mashup data from various applications in near-real-time. For businesses, APIs now offer the promise of having the right information, at the right place, and at the right time to make real-time decisions.
APIs and the Era of Real-Time Businesses. Cheap data storage and broadband are empowering APIs to provide rich, real-time information to businesses. Businesses no longer need to be tied to cyclical decision-making waiting for weekly or even quarterly reports. Real-time APIs enable businesses to reduce their decision-making to real-time much like a fighter pilot makes decisions in a dogfight. A fighter pilot’s decision-making processes are totally focused on his real-time environment and his adversary, and not waiting for periodic information updates (see John Boyd’s OODA decision-making loop). Real-time APIs enable business to innovate and breakdown artificial barriers that create time-delayed information cycles.
Enterprise Information, Not Enterprise Applications. It is the data, the information, that makes the business and not the software application. Businesses are finding that their large enterprise applications are no longer providing a distinct competitive advantage as they did in the past. Businesses and their competition are now being driven to not just access their enterprise software, but they also have an increasing need to access web services, open-source software, Software As A Service (SaaS), and so on. Just having good business processes supported by a monolith enterprise application will not beat the competition. People (customers, business users, business partners) are looking for and expecting real-time data and new, innovative information services that can only be enabled by a “mashup“ of applications that are enabled by APIs.
What exactly is an API? API are much like the power connection or network connection to your computer. APIs are hard to see, and most people do not notice them until they are not working. An Application Programming Interface (API) is an interface implemented by a software program to enable its interaction with other software. APIs are all about moving data (information) from one software to another. At its basic level, a API consists of a method of sending a data request to the API and a method to receive a data response back from the API. APIs can be fairly simple or complex involving many arguments, data definitions, and calling conventions. Additionally, API are present in most if not all programming languages and technologies to include Java APIs, web services, Windows API, Google Map API, and so on (see Wikipedia API for more information).
What Do APIs Do? APIs can do a lot of things. What is exciting about APIs today is that businesses can “mashup” data and immediately create new and enhanced information services just by masking up data. Examples of these mashups include real estate maps, comparative shopping applications, asset visibility applications, and so on. Prior to cheap data storage and cheap broadband, APIs were previously known to only to specialized programmers and some IT project managers. APIs were used to move data between various business systems and accounting systems, used to access software libraries, and to interface with various low-level hardware devices.
APIs offer businesses the capability to get the right data, at the right place, at the right time to enable business users to make superior decisions in real-time. Cheap data storage and cheap broadband enables new opportunities for businesses to use APIs to be innovative and remain competitive in the marketplace. More links on API trends: Providing an API to your ASP.NET Web Forms app – an introduction, The Truth about API’s – Need For an Open Service Definition, The Open API Economy, and QuickStudy: Application Programming Interface (API).
