Posts Tagged ‘Data’

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Application Programming Interfaces (API) Enabling Business Innovation

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

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).


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Protecting Data Rights and the Free Flow of Information

Saturday, January 23rd, 2010

This challenge of protecting data online is really putting a muzzle on using the full potential of today’s information technology. If we can solve this issue of protecting people’s data rights, we could realize the full potential of information technology to maximize the real-time sharing of information. This would be information that is complete, accurate, and timely that supports technology initiatives such as augmented reality, real-time web, real-time sensor networks, and so on.

There is No 100% Data Protection Guarantee. joeandrieu.com blog posting, Beyond Data Ownership to Information Sharing, gets me thinking that maybe we should be taking a broader view of not just focusing on protecting personal data, but focus on restricting the wrongful use of data. Joe is right in that we should assume that data cannot be fully protected. There is always going to be a hacker or someone’s carelessness that will “spill the beans”. There is no guarantee that data or data “rights” can be protected.

Protecting Online Data Much Like We Protect Real-World Property. Many people do not understand the issue of online data protection, and there are a variety of opinions on how to protect data online. In many aspects, protecting data online is not that much different from protecting real-world property. For example, look at the measures we take to protect a laptop that an employee may use at work and at home. The employee has a responsibility of taking reasonable measures to protect the theft of the laptop. The employer also has policies in place to secure its property. The general community has a moral obligation to protect private property. The Government also has the responsibility to protect property and punish violators. This same holistic approach is needed for protecting data online. Individuals, communities, companies, and governments need to be involved in protecting data rights.

Data Protection Versus Protecting the Wrongful Use of Data. In many cases online data protection measures should follow how we protect real-world property, but there is a key difference with protecting online data. Online data can be copied and transferred anytime, anywhere. Because of this, it may be best to focus more on restricting the wrongful use of data versus putting all our focus on data ownership rights and how to protect data online. We need to define who owns data and take reasonable measure to protect it, but we also need to take a more holistic approach. This means focusing on restricting the wrongful use of data.

Preventing the Wrongful Use of Data and the Free Flow of Information. We all need to pitch in to prevent hackers, thieves, mob mentality, and careless people from wrongfully using online data. We should all be watchful to prevent the wrongful use of personal data. We should all encourage and foster ways for people to be compensated for producing valuable information and content. Wrongful use of data and content should be discouraged and even punished. If we only take a data protectionist approach, it offers no guarantee that data will be protected, and just as bad, protectionist policies discourage the free flow of data as well as limiting the full potential of information technology.


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Can We Have Both: Real-Time Data and Personal Data Privacy?

Sunday, January 10th, 2010

Increasingly a major challenge for businesses is how to balance the need for real-time data and still protect the privacy of personal data. With information becoming so mobile and real-time on the internet, there is a real danger of people losing their rights to privacy and even their freedoms. The question for businesses and society is how can people enjoy rich, real-time information, and not lose their freedoms?

The Personal Data Privacy Challenge. Ideally, data needed for an application is freely available. Free, accessible data is easy to move and transfer between computers in real-time. There are challenges when data is Personally Identifiable Information (PII). This is information that can be used to uniquely identify, contact, or locate a single person or can be used with other sources to uniquely identify a single individual. In these situations data is needed to be protected both at rest (storage) and in motion. This can be done through procedural methods such as password protection or the use of encryption. More and more businesses and application developers are balancing the need for the free movement of data versus the need for personal data privacy.

The Social Debate of Personal Privacy. Our society as a whole is still coming to terms with personal data privacy versus reaping the benefits of social networks and real-time data. An example of this is where Facebook made their privacy policy significantly less restrictive for their hundreds of millions of subscribers. See RWW’s posting Facebook’s Zuckerberg Says The Age of Privacy is Over, for more on Facebook’s privacy changes. My comments on this were as follows:

“Is Facebook’s privacy settings leading us into a new era of social openness or are they arrogantly deciding for us that we need no privacy? I do not like Facebook’s cavalier and drastic approach in changing their privacy policy, but the real question is whether their privacy policy is reflecting social norms, and as a society should we be giving a way our privacy for the benefits of social networking.

Privacy is so closely tied to freedom. If someone wants to control you and knows everything about you, they can control you and take your freedom away. If someone wants to control you and they have no information about you, it is difficult for them to control you.

In the decades before the internet, Americans had a lot of privacy. I would say that this was not always the norm. When the U.S. was first founded, your neighbor’s usually knew everything about you. If you committed adultery, you received a Scarlet Letter. Everyone knew it. It was not until our society started to become more mobile that we began to have a high degree of privacy.

Now with information becoming so mobile, we are losing our privacy again. How can we enjoy all this rich, real-time information, and not lose our freedoms?”

The benefits of real-time data versus the risk of losing personal data privacy is a thorny issue. Businesses will need to balance these issues in light of customer needs, Government guidance, and business service offerings.


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