Driving Digital Innovation with a Layered API Design Approach

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Driving Digital Innovation with a Layered API Design Approach


Our speakers

Randy Heffner@BizTech21

Alistair Farquharson

@afarqu

Driving Digital Innovation with a Layered API Design ApproachRandy Heffner, VP and Principal Analyst

June 17, 2015

© 2015 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited 4

Mobile needs APIs

News flash: APIs enable much more

than mobile.


APIs are much more strategic than many think

APIsMobile

Web, kiosks, call center,

etc.

Multi-touchpoint foundation

Open web developers

Enterprise agility

Value chain optimization

Customer process

optimization

Connect products to ecosystems

Turn hidden assets into products

Turn core capabilities

into services

Enter completely

new markets


Source: June 2015, “How APIs Reframe Business Strategy” Forrester report

APIs reframe business strategy

Business

Customers

Channels

Where design for external integration

begins

Efficiency

Partners

Competencies

Ecosystems

Relationships

Leverage

Connections

Traditional business Open business


Trading platform

Source: June 2015, “How APIs Reframe Business Strategy” Forrester report

Digital disruption and a European bank’s open business

APIs

Institutional customers

Web

Custom UX

White label UX

• Turn a core business capability into a revenue source.

• Decouple innovation by the bank and its customers.

• The bank wins from customer innovation.

The shift

• Is the bank’s value-add the trading platform?

• Is the bank’s value-add the trading UX?

• Is it both?

• From where will the next unbundling come?

The questions

“If we don’t disrupt our own business, then someone else will — out of the blue.”

— CIO, European bank

• Craft loosely-coupled strategies for each core asset and capability.

• API-enable more and more of them.

• Disrupt where possible, react when needed.

The strategy

Europeanbank


Source: June 2013 “Establish Your API Design Strategy” Forrester report

Forrester’s four categories of APIs

Open web APIs

Tech-savvy consumers

B2B APIs

Internal APIs

Product APIs

Value-add innovators

Digital disruptors SuppliersDistribution

partners

Digital experiences (mobile, web, etc.)

Enterprise applications(custom, off-the-shelf, cloud, on-premise)

Products(software,

physical products,services)

Enterprise customers

Web site developers

Your enterprise Your products

Tech-savvy consumers

Product ecosystem

Wide-open to innovation Optimized business Build product ecosystemsEnterprise customers

1 2

3

4

JavaScript API JavaScript API / SDK Prebuilt integration


Source: June 2014 “Brief: Product APIs Create Distinct Customer Value And Opportunity” Forrester report

Product APIs

› APIs designed to . . .• directly control a product,

• or facilitate its integration into an ecosystem of related products,

• whether it is a physical product, digital product, or service.

› Hotel example:• Internal, open web, or B2B APIs: Reserve a hotel room

• Product APIs: Control the hotel room itself

› Every product or service either:• Is already digital

• Can have a digital proxy


APIs have varied key success factors

• Collaborate with devices to deliver engaging user experience.• Allow many data and transaction paths through the experience.

APIs for . . . Key roles and success factors

Single touchpoints

• Provide familiar user experience across all touchpoints.• Allow individual touchpoints to vary when appropriate.

Multitouchpoint strategy

• Match between business drivers and potential open web value.• Clear understanding of the types and styles of open web API applications.

Open web developers

Enterprise agility• Common definitions of enterprise transactions and data.• Coherent portfolios of services for each major business domain.

Product ecosystems• Create value-add in a constantly shifting community of related products.• Support strategic business partnerships and ecosystems.

B2B• Provide cross-organization process integrity.• Support cross-organization security federation.


Reference: March 5, 2015, “How To Design APIs For Mobile” Forrester report

With API layering, a coherent portfolio serves many

Business APIs======================Consistent business results

Multitouchpoint experience APIs======================Familiarity across touchpoints

Touchpoint-specific APIs======================

Technical adaptations

Mobile apps

Business APIs======================Consistent business results

B2B APIs==================Partner business rules

Presentation layer Business service layer

Partners and suppliersWeb apps Kiosks

Public ecosystem APIs==================

Open web business rules

Open web APIs==================

Caching and security

Public developers


One enterprise may have many API user communities

Open web API portal

(division 1)

Your organization

Open web developers

Customers

B2B API portal

Open web API portal

(division 2)

Internal developers API portal

Product design API portal

Business API portfolioUX API portfolio

Open web developers

Suppliers

Resellers

Adjacent products

Market-placesOpen web

developers

Mobile devs

Process devs

BI devs


Forrester recommendations

• “Out of the blue” digital disruption demands business agility.• API-enabled capabilities allow rapid business reconfiguration.

• Don’t short change the importance of business APIs.• Use service portfolio management for lightweight governance.

• Business scenarios determine quality-of-service and security demands.• API users determine how easy the API must be to use.

Treat API strategy as business strategy

Use layered design to evolve coherent API portfolios

Design for business scenarios and API users

Thank youRandy Heffner

@BizTech21

[email protected]


Core Capabilities for Layered APIs


API Platform Capabilities

When building or buying an API Platform, there are typically 3 high-level requirements/capabilities:

API PortalDeveloper

engagement experience

GatewaySecurity,

Management, Orchestration/Mediati

on

LifecycleDevOps, SDLC

Integration, Automation


API Portal

API Portal

Search

Documentation

Licensing

Partner Mgmt.

Provisioning

Federation

Analytics

Groups

Social


Different Audiences

Most enterprises are striving towards a layered API strategy

• Different requirements– Number of APIs– Security – enterprise LDAP vs. OpenID Connect– Workflow – Internal vs. B2B vs. consumer

• Different audience = Different user experience

• Your API Portal therefore needs to be built with these different audiences in mind this will affect:– User experience – search/catalog/complexity– Branding/Marketing


Different Providers

Large organizations may also have different API Providers internally:

• LoB, Group, Division or Geography will affect who is providing the API

• If each provider wants their own portal, a federated approach becomes important

• Centralized end-user experiences• Distributed control


API Gateway

Quota Mgmt.

PCI Compliance

Policy Mgmt.

Monitoring

OAuth

Security

Authentication

Protection

IAM Integration

Encryption

Mediation

Quality of

Service

Paging/Caching

Orchestration

Scripting


API Gateway

API Gateways should provide :• Non functional requirements such as security/monitoring etc. –– at

each point within a layered architecture• Aggregation/orchestration of APIs between layers to create

channel/touchpoint-specific APIs


Lifecycle

• Each API Layer and each user community could have different lifecycles:– Different development teams and SDLCs– Different DevOps processes and tools

• Organizations will have to determine how to control dependencies during development and at runtime while remaining agile.


Example - Retail Bank

• Business Objective : strengthen relationship with the Bank’s partners to bring in innovation form outside

• Challenge : create a platform to automate onboarding of partners

• Four different divisions are exposing APIs via a multi-tenant, federated deployment:– Departments 1 & 2 : Java and .NET shop with Oracle, Oracle

repository and Oracle ESB– Department 3 : Java and .NET shop with Tibco and Oracle

ESBs.– Department 4 : Smaller Java shop


Example - Retail Bank

• Solution :– To preserve the brand, a federation was created– All departmental APIs are be controlled by the members of the

federation– A single UI will aggregate the content from all the departmental

developer portals into a single UI– Control of ‘shared, enterprise’ APIs can be centrally controlled


Summary

• As organizations see the development of a layered API portfolio across different channels and lines of business they need to consider:– User Experience - how the audience affects it– Tooling – how to manage/secure/orchestrate the APIs in the

portfolio– The effect on SDLC and DevOps processes


Thank You

• Randy Heffner@[email protected]

• Alistair [email protected]@akana.com

Driving Digital Innovation with a Layered API Design Approach

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