Building an Enterprise API Program

Iddo Gino – CEO & Founder, RapidAPI

Agenda

Proliferation of APIs 1

2 API Stages: Private, Partner, Public, External

5 5 Components of an API Strategy

4 API Strategy & API Hub

3 Challenges with APIs

About Me & RapidAPI

● Founder & CEO @ RapidAPI

● Building APIs and Applications for over 10 years

● Thiel Fellow

● Forbes 30 under 30

● Reach out! iddo@rapidapi.com

● World’s Largest API Marketplace

○ 1 Million Developers

○ 10,000 APIs

○ Billions of API Calls

● Founded in 2015

● Based in San Francisco & Tel Aviv

● Backed by:

○ Andreessen Horwitz

○ Microsoft

○ Grove

Iddo Gino

The Need for a Strategy

APIs are Proliferating

They Have Huge

Potential…

…But also Challenges

We Need an API Strategy

Has to encompass full cycle – from private to public APIs

Proliferation of APIs

● Developers are increasingly utilizing APIs to develop new applications and software

● API Economy is predicted to grow to $2.2 Trillion dollars

● Already yielded multiple unicorns:

Ovum, “Realizing the Business Value of APIs,” October 2014 Google Searches for “Rest API”, 2004-2019

Acquired - $3B Public - $15B Private - $35B

Acquired - $800M Public - $18B Private - $1.1B

Where are APIs Used in the Enterprise?

Billing API

Users API

SSO API

Orders

API

Shipping API

Tracking API

Catalog API

Products API

Partners

Developers

3rd Party APIs

API Components

• Internal services created by

development team

• Used to build applications

and services

• Not exposed externally

Private APIs

• Powering integrations with

select partners and

customers

• Exposed on a per-need

basis

• Requires direct business

agreement / relationship

Partner APIs

• Powering community-built

applications and

integrations

• Exposed broadly on a self-

service basis

• Opens innovation

Public APIs

• Used by developers to

speed up development

• May be integrated on an ad-

hoc basis by developers

• Used for basic

infrastructure and

functionality

3rd Party APIs

Continuous Process

Private APIs Entering Mainstream

68% of organizations are using or

investigating microservices

29%

15%

24%

30%

68%

Using microservices in production

Using microservices in development

Investigating microservices

Other (2%)

Not using microservices

Ngnix Survey, 2015

3.2%

5.6%

8.8% 8.8%

10.4%

8.0%

10.8%

12.4%

8.0% 8.0%

7.2%

8.8%

How many APIs in your organization?

Imperva API Survey, 2018

Private APIs Growing Creation of APIs

50% of organizations have more than 300

APIs

Private APIs Creating Data & Development Silos

FICO Score API

Loan Offer API

Mortgage Rate API

Loans Team

Accounts API Users API Registration

API

User Data Team

FICO Score API

Loan Offer API

Analytics API

Mobile Team Web Team

Loan Offer API

Users API Analytics API

Private APIs Varied Deployment Environment

APIs are running across many

environments.

Siloing is aggravated by having multiple

environments

2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021

Infrastructure Spend in Enterprise

Data Center Private Cloud Public Cloud

IDC, Gartner, Based on Value 2019

API Partnerships Drive Businesses

Companies are creating new channels

through partner APIs.

Creating platform businesses by opening

up APIs.

Working with partners to create unique

solutions.

90%

60%

50%

Percentage of Revenue Generated Through APIs

Harvard Business Review, The Strategic Value of APIs, 2015

Companies Exposing More Public APIs

More and more companies are opening

public APIs

0

5000

10000

15000

20000

25000

30000

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

Publicly Available APIs

APIs Programable Web, 2019

Using 3rd Party APIs Accelerates Development…

Faster Development

Better Service Cost Effectiveness New Possibilities

Quickly integrate existing functionality rather than building it

from scratch

API providers accumulate years of

expertise to offer higher quality services

API companies enjoy economies of scale, and thus can offer

services at lower cost

Benefit from services like artificial

intelligence, machine learning and image

recognition

… But Integrating APIs is Hard

The “plumbing” of API integration hurts developer

productivity.

Every API speaks a different “language”:

● Format:

○ REST

○ SOAP

○ GraphQL

○ RPC

○ gRPC

○ Random

● Data:

○ XML

○ JSON

○ Binary

○ YAML

19%

38%

19%

16%

8%

>5 30 60 90 >180

Average Number of Days to Build Net New API Integrations

State of API Integration, 2018 Report

● Authorization:

○ OAuth 1.0

○ OAuth 2.0

○ OAuth Random

○ Basic Auth

○ Custom

● Signing Request

● Client SSL

● Dashboards

● Billing

● Provisioning

And 3rd Party APIs Create Risk

Every API is a Run Time dependency of your application, so

If an API goes down

Your App is Down

If an API is breached

Your Data is Leaked

If an API is slow

Your App is Slow

If an API is not compliant

Your App is not Compliant

And 3rd Party APIs Create Risk

Need for API Strategy - Challenges

For Internal Development External Facing

Private APIs & Microservices

How to make APIs shared and used across the organization

Partner Facing APIs

How to easily expose services to partners and make integrations seamless

Public APIs

How to create a public API ecosystem that fuels innovation

External 3rd Party APIs

How to visualize and govern the consumption of 3rd party APIs

Sharing APIs Governing APIs Discovering APIs

Strategy Goals

• Make it easier for

developers to

collaborate, share

and reuse APIs

Private APIs

•Enable business

partnerships through

seamless

technological

integrations

Partner APIs

•Unlock innovation by

leveraging the

developer community

with an open API

Public APIs

•Govern and monitor

the consumption of

3rd party APIs

3rd Party APIs

API Strategy Components

Executive commitment to cultural shift

Organization Structure

API Platforming

Education & Awareness

Executive Support

Peripheral Tooling

Team structure and talent to support

API transformation

Create programs to educate developers

on APIs and drive adoption through

awareness

Enhance API strategy with full

toolset for run and design time

Create a platform for managing and coalescing APIs

API Strategy Components

API Platforming

Executive Support

Developer Adoption

Executive Support

Developer Adoption is Critical BUT

Executive Support is the Catalyst

Executive Support is Detrimental to:

Team • Dedicating headcount & budget to own API management

Tooling • Appropriating budget for API tooling

• Standardizing on central components to drive unity

Time • Allowing time for engineering teams to make the transition (long term investment)

Incentive • Rewarding teams that share APIs and contribute

• Flag teams that are staying behind

Culture • Breaking cultural silos – operating as one company

This is critical

Executive Support – Microsoft

Satya Nadella CEO, Microsoft

“Right now we are API-ing every layer, celebrating any use anywhere and knowing we’ll have more opportunities in the future.”

05.06.2019

Executive Support - Amazon

Jeff Bezos CEO, Amazon

Amazon Inc., 2002

1) All teams will henceforth expose their data and functionality through service interfaces.

2) Teams must communicate with each other through these interfaces.

3) There will be no other form of interprocess communication allowed: no direct linking, no direct reads of another team's data store, no shared-memory model, no back-doors whatsoever. The only communication allowed is via service interface calls over the network.

4) It doesn't matter what technology they use. HTTP, Corba, Pubsub, custom protocols -- doesn't matter. Bezos doesn't care.

5) All service interfaces, without exception, must be designed from the ground up to be externalizable. That is to say, the team must plan and design to be able to expose the interface to developers in the outside world. No exceptions.

6) Anyone who doesn't do this will be fired.

Executive Support - Amazon

Executive Support – JP Morgan

Stephen Markwell Product Strategy, JP Morgan

APIs and How They Work | TechTrends | J.P. Morgan

Organization Structure

API Strategy Components

Team Ownership of Their Services VS

Standardization Across the Company

API Platforming

“Vertical” Ownership

“Horizontal” Standards

What questions do we need to answer?

● Who approves APIs to be used?

● Who approves APIs to be published?

● Who defines the standards that APIs conform to?

● Who decides & buys APIs tools? API Tooling

Governing APIs

API Standards

Team Ownership VS Horizontal Standards

Why Team Ownership?

● Optimization - Allow teams to define their own tools,

cadence and stack based on:

○ Specific product / tech needs

○ Team knowledge

○ Available resources

● Experimentation - Allow for more experimentation in

the stack

● Culture - Feeling of ownership by different teams

Why Horizontal Standards?

● Interoperability – make it easier for teams to

collaborate and use other services by making them

familiar

● Support – align the tech stack to have expertise built

throughout the organization

● Economics – benefit from economics of scale when

buying tools in bulk

● Optimization – allow to hone and perfect a single stack

across the company

Hybrid Ownership Model

API Center of Excellence Engineering Teams

Internal APIs 3rd Party APIs Internal APIs 3rd Party APIs

Governance • Define requirements

for external facing APIs

• Approve external APIs

• Monitor external API

usage

• Self service consumption of internal & external APIs

from Hub

Tooling Buy central tool for API sharing and discovery • Define own tools for

runtime, API design,

API building

N/A

Standards • Educate on API best-practices

• Certificate “API Heroes”

• Help preparing APIs for Externalization

• Freedom to build APIs

in most suitable

standards

N/A

Tooling Decisions

● Central tools – but self service

● Others are distributed

Business Need

Build Phase Test & Deploy

Design API

Framework Language / Runtime

Mock Gateway Runtime Testing and Monitoring

Publish & Share

Document API

Publish API to Organization

API Ready

API Platforming

API Strategy Components

There Must be a Standard Place

to Discover and Connect to APIs

API Platforming

API Runtime – a Variety of Technologies

API API API API

APIgee Akana Ngnix

API API API API

Tyk AWS API Gateway

API API API

Data Center Cloud Kubernetes

Developers

?

Envoy

Variance is Increasing–More APIs, More Platforms

3.2%

5.6%

8.8% 8.8%

10.4%

8.0%

10.8%

12.4%

8.0% 8.0% 7.2%

8.8%

How many APIs in your organization?

2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021

Infrastructure Spend in Enterprise

Data Center Private Cloud Public Cloud

IDC, Gartner, Based on Value 2019

Imperva API Survey, 2018

API Hub

aka API Hub / API Catalog /

API Store / API Marketplace

API Hub

API Creators

• Publish APIs

• Control API Access

• Define Usage Limits

• Monitor and Analyze Usage

API Consumers

• Discover Available APIs

• View API Documentation

• Provision Access

• Test API Requests

Governance Team

• Control API Visibility

• Define API Readiness Requirements

• Ensure Used APIs’ Compliance

• Track API Usage

Publicly Used APIs

API Hub – a Single Consolidation Layer

API API API API

APIgee Akana Ngnix

API API API API

Tyk AWS API Gateway

API API API

Data Center Cloud Kubernetes

Developers

Envoy

API Hub

Key API Hub Capabilities

• Support for all standards (OAS, GraphQL, etc.…) API Publishing

• Be able to search through all available APIs Discovery

• Be able to view documentation and test APIs easily Testing / Evaluation

• Provision API Access Provisioning

• Get information about API users and their usage Analytics & Metrics

• Be able to get support for used APIs and discuss enchantments Discussions / Support

Peripheral Tooling

API Strategy Components

Additional Tooling Required for

a Successful API Strategy

API Platforming

Peripheral Tooling Around the API Lifecycle

API

Producer

Design

Mock

Develop

Test

Deploy

Secure

Publish

Monitor

Monetize

Discover

Evaluate / test

Integrate

API

Consumer

Pay/subscribe

Monitor /Optimize

Manage Engage

Acquire

Secure

API Design

● Creating the documentation for the API and testing it in design time

● Used by individual developers as they design the API

Testing and Monitoring

● Make synthetic requests to the API for live testing in the runtime

● Multiple Use Cases:

○ Monitoring API Uptime

○ Complex Functionality Testing (asserting request / response)

○ Performance Testing (multi-geo, multi-request)

Synthetic Data

● Some data-sets are more sensitive, and thus can’t be shared across the company

● Synthetic Data -> “fake” data set that carries the same statistical properties as the original data, so it can be used for

AI/ML

Original Data

SQL

HDFS

API

Synthetic Data Generator API

Middleware for Older Services

● Convert older API types to more modern APIs (REST, GraphQL etc.…)

● Combine data from multiple sources into a single user-facing APIs

● Create APIs on top of existing systems / datasets (RPA, Middleware)

Education & Awareness

API Strategy Components

Create Awareness to API Program to

Drive API Publishing & Consumption

Educate on New Technologies & Best

Practices

Education and Awareness

Awareness

● API Newsletter – highlight new services and data available and new

tooling. Reward API publishers

● Celebrate Wins – create awareness of wins, incentivizing both API

publishers and users

● Events – internal hackathons and meetups are great starting points

for API awareness

Make API publishers heroes– They will be the internal champions.

Everyone want their API to be popular!

Education

● API Standards– maintain up-to-date documentation and guides on

API standards and tooling

● Seminars – perform workshops / seminars on API development and

tooling

● Online Courses – there are great online courses available. Buy and

make available throughout the company

API development is a basic skill – just like writing safe code or managing

agile development

API Strategy Components

Executive commitment to cultural shift

Organization Structure

API Platforming

Education & Awareness

Executive Support

Peripheral Tooling

Team structure and talent to support

API transformation

Create programs to educate developers

on APIs and drive adoption through

awareness

Enhance API strategy with full

toolset for run and design time

Create a platform for managing and coalescing APIs

Questions?

Also – iddo@rapidapi.com