Kin Lane

API Evangelist


The Secret to a Successful API is Internal


API Days - November, 2012

Open APIs Are Dominating the Conversation






Popularizing open APIs was necessary to get where we are in 2012

  • Bring awareness to the approach
  • Make service oriented architecture (SOA) more open
  • Make it about developers and not enterprise
  • Make it about delivering value, not just technology

Web APIs were successful because...

  • Simple
  • Hackable
  • Built on web technology (HTTP)
  • Self-Service
  • Friction-less
  • Distributed
  • Developer focused

It's easy to get caught up in hype around open.

  • Competition is doing it
  • Success of Twitter
  • Success of Amazon
  • Success of Twilio


Open is the story that has been told up until now

But successful API iniatives begin internally.

  • With passionate technologists who understand APIs
  • Thought leaders who see the coming API economy
  • Small iniatives and little successes
  • Getting buy in from all departments within a company

Do these passionate technologists exists in your company?

Do executives see it this way?


If not, you will need to cultivate it!

And it will take time...

All APIs start internally

Even public ones!

APIs start by taking inventory of business assets

  • And identifying...
  • Content
  • Data
  • Resources
  • And other assets..


That have the potential to be exposed as APIs

APIs allow defining of relationships around business assets

  • Who should have access
  • How they should interact
  • Who the owners are
  • Licensing and royalties
  • Business rules

APIs keeps things secure while providing friction-less access

  • Facilitating interoperability
  • Encouraging collaboration
  • Crossing organizational boundaries
  • Being open in a controlled way

APIs decouple business resources

  • Managed independently
  • Consumed independently
  • Easier migration
  • Faster scaling
  • Independent reuse

APIs facilitate rapid product cycles

  • Smaller products
  • Incremental releases
  • Granular ownership
  • Flexible reuse
  • Independent lifecycles

APIs are distributed by nature

  • Encouraging use of external contractors
  • Support ever growing remote workforce
  • Supports different geographic organizations
  • Empowers global scale

APIs will transform IT as we know it

  • Reducing IT bottlenecks
  • Democratizing business resources
  • Make priority IT project more successful
  • Allow 3rd party to handle overflow

Examples of Internal API Success - Amazon

  • Early pioneer with web APIs in 2002
  • Provided distributed commerce to web storefronts
  • Grew network of 1000s of affiliates
  • Saw the potential of web APIs early on...

Examples of Internal API Success - Amazon


  • 2003 Jeff Bezos Issued Mandate
  • All departments were to interact through web services
  • If you needed data from marketing, it had to come through API
  • If you needed to procure server capacity from IT, it came through API
  • All who didn't comply would be fired
  • Thank you, have a nice day!

Examples of Internal API Success - Amazon

  • Birth of Amazon Web Services and "the cloud"
  • On demand storage in 2006 w/ web API only
  • On demand compute in 2008 w/ web API only
  • Self-Service access to resources
  • Pay as you go, only for what you use

Examples of Internal API Success - Amazon


Radically shifting computing and the Internet as we know it!


Transforming Amazon internally!

Transforming online commerce!

Transforming computing!

Transforming business!

Examples of Internal API Success - Netflix

  • Looking to change the movie and television industry
  • Needing to be agile and scale rapidly to compete
  • Reach developers to help define next generation of movies
  • Saw the potential of web APIs early on...

Examples of Internal API Success - Netflix

  • 1,000 flowers bloom
  • Worked the opposite of what they anticipated
  • Discovered the potential of internal APIs
  • Open APIs is now .05% of Netflixi API usage

Examples of Internal API Success - Netflix

  • Internal APIs allowed Netflix to decouple business operations
  • Move operations into the AWS cloud where they could scale
  • Leave the datacenter and make operations more elastic
  • Support 700 devices through web APIs

Examples of Internal API Success - Netflix

  • Allowed Netflix to expand internationally
  • Expand to Europe
  • Expand to Asia
  • Expand to South America

Examples of Internal API Success - Netflix


Evolving how we engage with entertainment

  • On televisions
  • On computers
  • On mobile phones
  • On game consoles
  • In our cars

APIs can transform how your company operates

  • By Promoting innovation
  • Democratizing company assets
  • Allow teams to be more nimble
  • Accelerate product development
  • Connect remote teams around globe

Internalizing APIs are key to the success of your API strategy


Internalize APIs as part of your company DNA


Change the culture of your company to be API centric

The number one reason a public API will fail..

...is because lack of internal support


If you start internally..

  • You can adopt an API centric approach to business
  • Successfully culvitate the internal support you need
  • Find success with partner API implementations
  • Find success with public API implementations
  • Prepare your company for the API economy!

The End


By Kin Lane (@kinlane)