API Management - A Transformation

API Management- a Transformation

www.soa.com/atmosphere

Today’s Audience

• You work for a company and are wondering how to leverage APIs– How do you create a compelling case for your business?– How do you go about building an API?– How do you release it into the wild?

• You are an App Developer– What does the API do for me?– Can I trust this API?

• You are one of our competitors– They are serving beer in the lobby


A Case Study – SOA Software• SOA Software built its first product in 2002• Thriving software product business

– Direct Sales to Enterprise– On premise

• Profitable


Existing Market Landscape

• SOA Management• Registry/Repository• Governance

• We saw this market evolve from SOA Management to a larger, and more complex market over time


Change

• Driving forces for change

– Encroachment on our existing business model

– Different users and buyers

– A natural evolution for SOA


Emerging Market Landscape• (Cloud) Integration Brokers/Brokerages – these are the middle-

men, like SOA Software, that are offering value-added services for hard-earned cash

• API Providers – these are businesses that expose APIs• App Developers – these are internal groups, partners and

developers

• Typical patterns that we are seeing:– B2E – business to employee. More and more businesses are

leveraging mobile devices (personal or not) in the workplace– B2B – the traditional partner integration space with an emphasis

on mobile, devices– B2D – business to developer. This is a pattern that exploits a long

term consumer-facing strategy


Challenges• Motivating the business

– Threats do not always translate well to opportunities• Channel Development

– Funding– Sales– Support– Profit

• Leveraging existing technology– Temptation is to throw everything out and start again– Don’t forget that while technology changes, the problems

largely stay the same– New requirements: SaaS, Multi-tenancy, UI, Security,

Market and Competitive needs, etc.


Our Approach• We have a good, scalable, proven SOA runtime technology that

is capable of REST, Mobile, etc.

– An on-premise software product is tough to build and support– We wanted to leverage this as much as possible. This has years of

QA and works like a charm

• Our management server is targeted for internal use, behind the firewall by operations and IT.

– We decided to create a new server that leveraged the latest technologies and met the requirements of SaaS, multi-tenancy and federation. It is impossible to retrofit these capabilities and we needed a whole new product.


Our Approach• We set about designing the API as a

product itself: the ‘Atmosphere Platform API’

• Since we were building an API Management platform anyway we could be our own customer to prove out the technology

• As an example, we needed the following API Management Requirements ourselves:– App and API Discovery – we are an App, we

had an API– Community Management– Debugging, Testing, Monitoring– Security– Policy Management– Document Management


Platform Architecture


A new product for a new channel• Has both enterprise maturity and the feel of a new product• Is targeted to a new audience• Supports multiple channels• The API allows the product to be deployed as SaaS, on-premise,

and hybrid• Enables new business models, including federations


Summary

• Start with a compelling business strategy– New channels– New markets– New models– Risks and Threats

• Treat your API as a product– Extend your brand– Put yourself in the developer’s shoes, think about how they can

make money• Leverage your API as a platform

– Provides both stickiness and scaling strategy– Provides technical longevity - as soon as you launch a product, it is

out of date. An API has a longer life.


Thanks…

Alistair Farquharson, CTO, SOA [email protected]@afarqu@atmosphere_api @SOASoftwareInc

mailto:[email protected]

API Management - A Transformation

Technology

Transcript of API Management - A Transformation