Trends 2015: 5 ways to put the API to serve the business

This year, web APIs will become an important part of many new IT scenarios - from the Internet of Things to analytics and service integration. The API opens up many new perspectives for modern companies and people working on technology creation, helping them to achieve new success.

Application programming interfaces (APIs) have long been one of the developers' tools to help create and link applications. Soon, the web API or service interfaces that are being called over the Web will become part of any new IT scenario: from the Internet of Things to analytics, service integration, or fixing user state. Roberto Medrano from SOA Software shared his thoughts on how the web API will be able to help us this year, and it turned out that with their help almost any tasks can be solved.
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APIs will help develop the Internet of Things (Internet of Things, IoT)

“In essence, IoT is nothing more than a platform implemented using an API to spread [the ability] to use data with things that already have value for users,” says Medrano. “There is no Internet of things without API - every bit of information transmitted by the device / to the device gets there using the API”. In addition, as Medrano says, APIs provide IoT classification, allowing you to carry out “device-level data transfer without having to spend time processing this data by third-party to get results that are meaningful to the end user.

API will improve the quality of integration with the cloud

Cloud and SaaS applications need to be integrated into modern Internet space, and the API provides enough flexibility to quickly implement such integration, says Medrano. In addition, the issues of identifying, integrating, orchestrating and managing APIs will be actively developed in the near future, which will strengthen the links between the API and the data.

APIs will help ensure that Big Data is analyzed.

This year, the API will not only provide data transfer and exchange, “but also allow analytics to be used to understand how this data is used,” Medrano predicts. “The API provides us with a huge amount of data and insights about the behavior of the buyer, data that could not be obtained in other ways,” indicates Medrano.

These insights include who uses the data, how it is consumed, when modifications or changes to existing systems will be needed.

APIs will open the door to innovation

The API will help develop innovation in two ways. First, “enterprises open their data by distributing APIs to stimulate creative solutions from partner companies and third-party developers,” says Medrano. Secondly, “products and services equipped with an API provide developers with tools that allow them to concentrate on creating new, innovative, useful products so that they [developers] do not have to worry about managing backend development and servers.” Such built-in features include security and orchestration capabilities.

API will increase the interest in using microservices

APIs have multi-component specifications, and this alone leads to a natural breakdown of enterprise applications into microservices. “APIs become intermediaries between a variety of quality and quantity data and applications. And microservices help to create such applications in the form of combining the necessary services, and not in the form of a heavy, tightly coupled, unidirectional software conglomerate, ”explains Medrano.

In the next topic we will talk about the implementation of API in the infrastructure of the hosting provider - using the example of the 1cloud project.