Luis Weir - Enterprise API Management: Design and Deliver Valuable Business APIs

Do you remember the days when businesses were considering whether they should invest in a website? Would building an online presence have any impact on their bottom line?

Getting on the web merely involved moving from the Yellow Pages and printed advertisements to a new channel. But this still left the potential of offering every business capability digitally untapped.

The web revolution was a kick-start for the next era for businesses digital transformation. And APIs are the connective fabric of this much-debated digital transformation. Under API transformation, you deliver your organizational capabilities your products via APIs. Your communication, information exchange, innovation, and adaptation to ever-changing market conditions happens through well-laid-out APIs. The APIs become the backbone of your company. You can even leverage your partner sales channels with the right APIs!

API transformation does not start with building APIs, which were previously the technical creations of engineers. It begins with changing the mindset of the entire organization. It means embracing the culture of API first.

API first implies that everything produced and consumed in the organization is, and has, an API. Companies such as Adidas, DHL, or Volkswagen have already embarked on the API-first journey. Do you ever wonder whether there is an API for Adidas Stan Smith Sneakers? There is, and not just one! Adidas product, order, inventory, and other APIs are all about physical products. Every product has an API!

And we are still only scratching the surface. APIs no longer live isolated in silos; they are forming landscapes on every level: team, organization, domain, and even cross-domain. In the coming years, autonomous APIs will completely change how we discover, close, and implement deals. How do you find the best logistics service to ship a container from Wakkanai Port every month? What if you can perform this search and make the order in a fraction of a second? What if you can look for and close better deals a thousand times a day? Do you still think that, in 10 years' time, businesses will be asking whether they should invest in APIs?

Of course, embarking on an API journey requires preparation, learning new skills, and avoiding roadblocks. Many organizations naively start with the purchase of an expensive API solution in the hope of getting on the right track, only to later find themselves in a vendor lock-in trap, with a lack of product ownership and the infamous pitfall of "build it (an API), and they will come."

Executing a successful API transformation is a matter of building upon the three pillars: business, organization, and technology. Ignore one of them, and the project will fail. Each pillar has to understand the role and importance of APIs, rally under the API-first flag and carefully plan the API strategy. Only when all three elements are acting together can you hope for a prosperous API landscape.

This book will take you on an API journey that avoids common traps. It is the handbook for every API program owner, enterprise architect, and forward-thinking business person. Wherever you are, I am sure this book will prove to be an excellent companion.

The author (Luis) does an incredible job of explaining the business aspects of APIs in chapters one, three, and eight, while providing a great deal of technical background in chapter two, and then building on these foundations with architectural and technological concepts in the subsequent sections. The learning process then culminates in chapter seven, which presents the framework for the API life cycle process before closing with the grand finale on API products, business, and organizational impacts.

This book is the missing API manual for everybody interested in executing API transformation. It provides a holistic, concise look at the business, organization, and technical aspects of APIs like no other book before it.

API styles, tools, and vendors come and go. However, the concepts as presented in this book will help you to create a culture and values that last.

Good luck on your API journey!

Zdenek "Z" Nemec

Founder of Good API Consulting, and the author of API Blueprint and supermodel.io