apidays LIVE Singapore - There’s more to API than meets the eye by Jonathan Heywood, Software AG
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apidays LIVE Singapore 2021 - Digitisation, Connected Services and Embedded Finance April 21 & 22, 2021 There’s more to API than meets the eye Jonathan Heywood, Senior Vice President, Business Development at Software AG
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apidays LIVE Singapore - There’s more to API than meets the eye by Jonathan Heywood, Software AG
- 1. © 2021 Software AG. All rights reserved. For internal use only and for Software AG Partners. 1 There’s more to API than meets the eye Jonathan Heywood SVP Business Development Software AG
- 2. © 2021 Software AG. All rights reserved. 2 98% 12% 81% of IT leaders said that APIs are very important for their company’s operations of organizations say their integration systems are entirely on-premises of leaders say their organizations use microservices Source: Vanson Bourne research – March 2021
- 3. © 2021 Software AG. All rights reserved. 31% Source: DevOps Digest
- 4. Benefits achieved through utilizing APIs © 2021 Software AG. All rights reserved. For internal use only and for Software AG Partners. 4 39% 45% 46% 46% 49% 49% 53% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% Ability to gain customer insights Easier to integrate with B2B partners Reduction of time to integrate other systems Faster time to market for new products/services Creation and personalization of user experiences Integration of cloud apps/services with other systems Flexibility in delivering services/information Source: Vanson Bourne research n=950 - March 2021
- 5. © 2021 Software AG. All rights reserved. For internal use only and for Software AG Partners. 5
- 6. Challenges faced when utilizing APIs © 2021 Software AG. All rights reserved. For internal use only and for Software AG Partners. 6 3% 33% 34% 36% 38% 40% 41% 48% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% No challenges Difficulties with lifecycle management Issues with managing them Issues with creating/developing them Lack of API-enabled technology stack Risk to scalability and QoS Limited staff skillset Ensuring API security Source: Vanson Bourne research n=950 - March 2021
- 7. © 2021 Software AG. All rights reserved. For internal use only and for Software AG Partners. 7 Your APIs App developers API Management Your developers External APIs
- 8. © 2021 Software AG. All rights reserved. For internal use only and for Software AG Partners. 8
- 9. © 2021 Software AG. All rights reserved. For internal use only and for Software AG Partners. 9 32% 36% 27% 5% Significant improvements needed Notable improvements needed Small improvements needed No improvements needed Integration process require improvement Source: Vanson Bourne research n=950 - March 2021
- 10. The Challenge © 2020 Software AG. All rights reserved. For internal use only and for Software AG Partners. 10 On premises IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) Lift&Shift systems to IaaS PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) Build new apps on PaaS SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) Adopt SaaS apps Int/ESB/API/B2B
- 11. © 2021 Software AG. All rights reserved. For internal use only and for Software AG Partners. 11 64% 23% 12% 1% Hybrid Cloud only On-prem only Don’t use integration Where are you running your integration systems? Source: Vanson Bourne research n=950 - March 2021
- 12. The need to integrate everything © 2020 Software AG. All rights reserved. For internal use only and for Software AG Partners. 12 API B2B IoT INTEGRATION HYBRID INTEGRATION PLATFORM “Things” Mobile Apps Social Networks On-Premises Applications and Data Sources Business Process Networks Business Partners Subsidiaries SaaS/Cloud Services EDW Mart MDM API B2B IoT INTEGRATION HYBRID INTEGRATION PLATFORM
- 13. Challenges faced with integration systems © 2021 Software AG. All rights reserved. For internal use only and for Software AG Partners. 13 4% 32% 38% 40% 40% 40% 47% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% No challenges Disconnected business units Scalability issues Company resistance to change Limited staff skills Limited budget Ensuring security from external threats Source: Vanson Bourne research n=950 - March 2021
- 14. © 2021 Software AG. All rights reserved. For internal use only and for Software AG Partners. 14
- 15. © 2021 Software AG. All rights reserved. For internal use only and for Software AG Partners. 15 Systems of Innovation Systems of Differentiation Systems of Record Gartner – Feb 2016 - Seven Steps to Start Your DevOps Initiative Unique processes Current competitive advantage Standardization Operational efficiency Compliance Next competitive advantage
- 16. © 2021 Software AG. All rights reserved. For internal use only and for Software AG Partners. 16
- 17. © 2021 Software AG. All rights reserved. For internal use only and for Software AG Partners. 17
- 18. © 2021 Software AG. All rights reserved. For internal use only and for Software AG Partners. 18 Are you utilizing microservices in your organization? Source: Vanson Bourne research n=950 - March 2021 Total 81% C-level 90% Mid-management 68% Senior-management 84%
- 19. Challenges with microservices service mesh implementation © 2021 Software AG. All rights reserved. For internal use only and for Software AG Partners. 19 5% 27% 36% 52% 52% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% No challenges Missing skillset Lack of maturity Gaps in its development Complex to implement Source: Vanson Bourne research n=950 - March 2021
- 20. Benefits of combining APIs, microservices and integration © 2021 Software AG. All rights reserved. For internal use only and for Software AG Partners. 20 51% Boosted productivity and time saving 49% Higher customer satisfaction 49% Ability to gain better better customer insights 45% Faster time to market 44% Long term cost savings Source: Vanson Bourne research n=950 - March 2021
- 21. APIs require integration to unlock data Microservices can deliver huge value if challenges are overcome Your APIs are as valuable as your products/services © 2021 Software AG. All rights reserved. For internal use only and for Software AG Partners. 21
- 22. © 2021 Software AG. All rights reserved. For internal use only and for Software AG Partners. 22 TIP: AppMesh workshop at 3:30pm today
- 23. © 2021 Software AG. All rights reserved. For internal use only and for Software AG Partners. 23
Editor's Notes
- Thank you for joining us this morning to explore the world of APIs, Integration and Microservices. But let’s start with some numbers.
- 98% of IT leaders said that APIs are very important for their company’s operations. Yet only 3% say there are no challenges to their implementation of APIs. -> 12% of organizations say their integration systems are entirely on-premises, although its questionable whether the rest are reaping the full benefits of Cloud. -> 81% of IT leaders say their organization uses Microservices today, but we see a markedly different response, depending on who we ask. This insightful data came from independent research carried out by renowned market analysts Vanson Bourne. They surveyed 950 IT leaders across multiple industries, including Asia Pacific, to learn about their use of APIs, Integration and Microservices, along with the benefits and the challenges of doing so. Let’s look at these three areas in turn to discover how they contribute to digital transformation and innovation, and how they are interrelated.
- With 5G networks coming online, along with a world full of mobile devices, a spiderweb of connectivity will continue to be spun faster than we ever thought possible. For businesses to succeed in this new connected world, APIs will need to be built for consumption, focusing on simplicity and the developer experience. The ease-of-use and reliability of those APIs will be as important as the ease-of-use and reliability of your products or services. As an Example: -> This smartwatch, which is talking to APIs on my phone over Bluetooth. If an app or website doesn’t work smoothly, how much patience do you have before you switch to an alternative? -> When you talk to Alexa, Siri or Google Home, you're effectively interacting with an API using your voice. -> IoT-enabled lightbulbs in commercial buildings are already ordering replacements for themselves when failure is imminent. All this connectivity is happening via APIs and every business will be building and consuming APIs now and in the future. -> Already 31% of businesses’ revenue is being generated by APIs or API-related implementations. So everyone understands the importance of APIs. But what benefits are companies trying to obtain? Here’s some more data from Vanson Bourne’s research:
- Take a close look at these: Delivering information Integrating cloud apps and services Integrate other systems Integrate with B2B partners most of them are related to exposing and leveraging data that resides in existing systems, or even in other organisations.
- UK long-distance bus company, National Express, is a great example of this. They traditionally target customers who have more time than they have money, as bus travel is often not the fastest way to get from one place to another. They already had digital sales channels through their own mobile app and website, but by exposing APIs and integrating with the country’s leading train ticketing platform, they reached a whole new customer base, and vastly increased their ticket sales and revenue. But such changes are not without challenges. National Express had to deal with a 100-fold increase in timetable searches, which could jeopardise the stability of their core applications.
- Scalability, along with other challenges, is cited as one of the barriers to successful API adoption. And the heightened awareness and concern for security is likely a result of Covid 19 and the increased urgency with which digital solutions have been rushed out since the pandemic struck. Recent research in Germany shows that almost half of mid-sized companies made rapid changes to their business model, or their product and service offerings since Covid started. And I hear the same is true in Asia.
- I talked earlier about how you should give as much attention to designing and managing your APIs as you do to delivering high-quality desirable products. Developers that can use your APIs with ease and confidence are as important to your business as satisfied customers. You need to take similar steps to ensuring the quality, supportability and ease-of-use of your APIs. And you probably want to monitor and control who uses them, while also protecting sensitive business applications. You may even want to link billing and payments to the use of your APIs. But have you also thought about the other aspects of APIs. Are your developers also using other companies’ APIs? Maybe those APIs cost money. -> Do you have the right controls in place to ensure that such costs don’t spiral out of control? When Google increased the price of their Google Maps API in 2018, there were many horror stories of companies receiving a massive bill from Google due to uncontrolled use by a naive developer. This is also part of successful use of APIs. So we’ve talked about APIs, and you understand the Value Creation aspect. But where do APIs come from? You may think that all good business applications today already have APIs. So you just need to manage them, and you’re OK. Well, it’s not that simple.
- The average company uses 123 SaaS applications, not to mention many hundreds more in your own data centre. If you give app developers access to those raw APIs, they won’t know where to start. Have you ever looked a the API for -> Salesforce.com? Or Marketo? Or ServiceNow? There are thousands of functions, each with hundreds of data fields. Authentication often involves multiple steps and is different for each application. Developers are impatient – just like you and me – and want results fast. So it is vital to create simpler APIs, through mapping, transformation, enrichment and composition. I speak to many companies who place integration capabilities at the heart of their API strategy. But you already have an integration solution, right? I think every company has somehow solved their integration problems over the last 20 years. Some have deployed an Enterprise Service Bus, or ESB, while others have built point-to-point interfaces.
- However, there are still gaps. Two-thirds of IT leaders said that notable or significant improvements were needed to their integration processes. We all know what happens to customer experience when systems aren’t integrated. I personally hate it when I book a hotel room on the hotel’s website, and then have to provide all my address details again at check-in.
- And that gap is set to get even larger. In the last 20 years, your integration was mostly within the confines of your own data centre. Now, though, Cloud is the way forward, bringing innovation and agility to your business. -> You may be lifting-and-shifting classic applications from your data centre to a cloud provider like Amazon, Microsoft or Google. -> You are probably adopting SaaS applications, to replace ageing, inflexible on-premise applications. -> And if you’re smart, you are building new innovative capabilities using native cloud stacks from AWS or Azure. Most cloud strategies involve a mixture of these three. But what is that doing to all your data? -> What used to reside inside your data centre, and be reasonably well integrated with whatever integration solution you had in place, is now distributed to all corners of the internet. You need a new approach to unlock that data from these new silos, in a time when access to that data is more important than ever for your business.
- Some companies are lucky enough to be founded in the cloud era. But for the vast majority of you, the reality will be hybrid for the foreseeable future. And that is echoed by the IT leaders in Vanson Bourne’s survey, where 64% said their integration systems are already hybrid. So are your integration systems hybrid? If so, are you getting all the real benefits of cloud, or are you just trying to run an on-premises ESB in a cloud data centre? Will your current solution stretch to wherever all your data resides tomorrow?
- Modern hybrid integration platforms provide a seamless connection between on-premises applications and the cloud. They make it easier to connect to data wherever it is, and give the business more freedom to choose the applications that are best for them, without lengthy integration projects.
- But they also address another crucial challenge: skill sets. 40% of IT leaders quote limited staff skills as a major challenge in integration projects.
- Integration has historically been a very technical matter, requiring expert skills that are scarce and expensive. SaaS applications have raised the bar for intuitive user interfaces, and it is now possible to empower business users to compose APIs and integrate systems using simple drag-and-drop operations. This allows the more technical developers to create API building blocks that business users can rapidly compose into new business APIs and integrations.
- So, we now understand the importance of APIs and why they must be properly managed. We’ve learned that most APIs are exposing data that resides in existing applications, which is best enabled using a hybrid integration platform. But is that all? How are you differentiating yourself from your competitors? -> You are not going be faster, better, cheaper than them if you are using the same ERP system, CRM system, warehouse management system as everyone else. So to differentiate and innovate, -> you will need to develop custom applications that no-one else has. You used to do that in massive projects that were complex to manage and took ages to deliver results. These days, people are turning to microservices as a much better way of managing and scaling such developments. Everyone points to Amazon, Netflix and Google, whose meteoric growth would not have been possible without microservices.
- Amazon has completely separate teams building the dozens of microservices behind their website: Just take a look: -> The pricing engine that scours the internet to offer the most competitive price that is also commercial viable. -> The availability engine that immediately knows where the product is and how quickly it can be shipped to my address. -> The bundling engine that entices me to buy more by offering discounts on multiple related products. -> The recommendation engine that suggests alternative products based on other users’ behaviors. -> The product details engine, with accurate descriptions, specifications and photos. -> The sponsored offerings, allowing vendors to promote their products in the right context. -> The customer community engine, allowing customers to ask and answer questions about products before and after buying them. -> The reviews engine that helps us make decisions based on what other people think. Can you imagine how complex it would be to manage all these capabilities in a monolithic application? You would struggle to release a new version more than once or twice per year.
- Microservices architecture are what allow such development to happen at massive scale. Companies like Amazon are deploying changes to their website multiple times per day. They will even expose different sets of users to different variants of a microservice, analyse behavior and then pick the one that is most effective. But there is also a lot of hype around microservices. They are not yet universally understood.
- Vanson Bourne asked IT leaders whether their company is using microservices, 81% said they did. But if you split that out by seniority, -> 90% of C-level leaders said their company uses microservices, while only 68% of lower-level managers said they did. There is clearly a perception gap between the optimistic C-suite and the more realistic guys on the ground.
- There is clearly an appetite for microservices, but when probed about the challenges - complexity, skills and maturity of the technology were seen as the main barriers. The right technology can help to manage the complexity and maturity gaps that people see in microservices.
- So we have seen how APIs, Integration and microservices go hand-in-hand to create the fabric of innovative digital applications. The vast majority of IT leaders surveyed said that an integrated platform for APIs, integration and microservices would be highly beneficial to their organization in a number of areas.
- So let me leave you with these thoughts. -> You need to manage your APIs with as much care as you do with your products or services. API management is not a commodity. Companies are realizing the need for advanced capabilities in order to meet the growing needs of APIs within their company. -> Almost every API project requires integration capabilities, to unlock and get the most value from data hidden away in applications and databases. -> Companies recognize the huge potential of microservices, but adoption will be slow if the challenges of skills and technical complexity are not properly addressed.
- And on that last point, of microservices complexity, I’d like to invite you to join our workshop later this afternoon at 3:30pm, where Sury and Pavankumar will show you how some of these microservices challenges can be addressed. Thank you. And I believe we have a few minutes left for questions.