Platforms are fast becoming the de-facto business model for large-scale digital innovation. The success of unicorn businesses such as Uber and AirBnB that continue to disrupt traditional established markets is proof that business platforms are here to stay! Building a sustainable platform goes beyond just technology. Ensuring digital innovation, participation and agility from both internal and external stakeholders of a platform require platform design that takes into account the needs of producers and consumers of services and solves them via a technology platform. APIs are a key part of this platform driven digital innovation, enabling organizations to expose internal assets in a controlled manner to various stakeholders whilst enabling the community to build innovative applications consuming these services. API platforms provide the core technology for the sharing of these APIs. This workshop looks at the power of the platform business model and case studies around them. We then look at how API platforms play a role in digital innovation through concepts such as API management, rate limiting, security, monetization, analytics and social feedback.

1. Building Business Platforms Using an
API Driven Marketplace
Mifan Careem
Senior Director - Solutions Architecture,
WSO2 Inc
1
Workshop - Boston, March 2018

2. Agenda
• The platform business model and why it works
• API marketplaces as business platforms
• Platform architecture and implementation
• Governance in platforms - Rise of the mega
platforms
• Incentives, monetization and business models
2

3. Detailed Agenda
Key Platform Features
Stakeholder Participation
Feedback loops
Matching Producers to Consumers
Reputation based priority and matching
Self service
Platform Architecture and Implementation
API Driven architecture
End to end architecture - Add edge capabilities
using composition
Iterative Architectures and Implementation
Micro-services driven pod teams
Mini services and composition 3
Governance in Platforms - Smart Self Governance
Participatory governance
Feedback loop
Policy
Fair governance
Transparency
Incentives - monetary and Social Currency
Fun, Fame and Fortune
No. of shares, likes, network size, re-tweets,
views, comments, claps,
Platform Monetization and Business Models

4. “Software alone is a commodity.
There is nothing stopping
anyone from copying the
feature set, making
it better, cheaper, or faster.”
FRED WILSON, FOUNDER – USV – MODERN MONOPOLIES

5. The Platform Business Model

6. A platform, in its simplest sense,
is digitized, participatory business
models that facilitate exchange
between stakeholders
of a business, creating commercially
connected ecosystems

7. Stakeholders + Value Unit + Filters -> Core Interaction

8. Stakeholders of a business here can vary
from employees of the company to supply
chain partners to producers and consumers
of goods and services to the general
community that a business exists in and
even to competitors (remember coopetition
from business school?) as well

9. Unicorn Businesses

10. Unicorn Businesses
http://www.innovationtactics.com/platform-business-model-complete-guide/

11. API Marketplaces and Platforms

12. API Marketplace
12
An API marketplace is a
platform to effectively
connect API producers and
API consumers -
and as with any marketplace
this provides the tools and
means to do so

13. 13https://www.ideabiz.lk/store/

14. Dialog Axiata
• Unify multiple development teams as well as
• internal app and service development and reuse
• Digital strategy to compete with newer over-the-air
providers and launch newer digital products
• Provide the basis of telco-wide digital transformation
14
The Requirement

15. Dialog Axiata
• Internal and external enterprise API marketplace with
WSO2 API manager and related technologies
• Evangelism events, e.g. hackathons, workshops, etc.
• Incentives including investment programs, prizes,
leaderboards to promote application development
• API marketplace with full ecosystem management for
end-to-end API and app development
15
The Solution

16. API Marketplace - Business Advantages
• Discovery of APIs by
consumers
• Reuse of APIs
• Social features encourage
participation
• Evangelism for application
development and usage of
APIs
16
• Evangelism for API design
and development
• API composition
• Promote participation via
incentives
• Governance and standards
• Cross division usage
• Monetization

17. Incentivizing Stakeholders to make
platforms work

18. Pipe vs Platform Business Model
• Value produced upstream and
consumed downstream
• Straightforward user acquisition
• Product design focused on
consumers
• Monetization focused on consumers
E.g. Goods, manufacturing
Britannica Encyclopedia, TV
channels
18
• Users create and consume value
• Extend platform functionality via
APIs
• First few users have minimal value
• Product design focused on
stakeholders (producers,
consumers, etc.)
• Unique business models, revenue
share
E.g. Internet businesses, Wikipedia,
Youtube

19. Feedback Loop
19
Source: David Sacks, Yammer
on Uber’s business model
valuation

20. Social Incentives
• Social Incentives
• Fun, Fame, Fortune
• No. of Shares, Likes, Claps, Re-Tweets, View
• Leaderboards
• Rating/Filtering
20

21. Platform Monetization and Business Models
• Transaction costs
– Fixed costs
– % (e.g Uber, AirBnB, Freelancer [10%])
– Revenue share
– Commission based
• Pay for access
– Pay for general access
– Pay for focused access (e.g LinkedIn recruitment)
– Pay for visibility (e.g Google, FB ads)
• Curated Access
• Freemium
• Cross business unit revenue models
21

22. Platform Architecture Principles

23. Platforms and Projects

24. Platforms and Platform Team
Team
Centralized platform team
Platform Architect
Platform Owner
Platform DevOps | TechOps
Platform support
Architecture
Highly available
Iterative Architecture
Ops
Multiple environments
Source control and config versioning
Monitoring, Patches and Fixes
Deployment smoke test automation
Rolling updates 24
Platform (Dev)
CI / CD
Platform (Test)
Platform (Prod)

25. Platforms and Projects
Projects are built on top of
platforms
Expect shared capabilities
from the platform
Teams
Project Owner
Project Architect
Project Engineers
25
Platform
Project 1 Project 2 Project n

26. Central vs De-centralised Platforms
Centralised vs De-
centralised
Heterogeneous Platforms
Blueprint Architecture
based Homogenous
Platforms
26
Platform
Project 1 Project 2 Project N
Platform
Project 1 Project 2 Project N
Repo

27. Platforms and Projects
Separate versioning
strategies for platforms vs
projects
Platform features need to be
backward compatible
27
Platform 1.0
Project 1
V 1.1
Project 2
V 1.3
Project n
V 1.n
Platform 2.0
Project 1
V 1.2
Project 2
V 1.4
Project n
V 2.0

28. Iterative Architecture and Implementation

29. Iterative Architectures
https://wso2.com/whitepapers/an-iterative-approach-to-digital-transformation/

30. https://wso2.com/whitepapers/an-iterative-approach-to-digital-transformation/

31. API Driven Architecture

32. 32
API Always Comes First

33. 33
APIs are found in Every Layer

34. End to end architecture

35. Edge features using API Composition
Support integration at the
edge with personalization
Ability to differentiate
between shared features vs
personalized features
35
API Platform
(Shared Features)
API
/foo
API
/bar
App A
API
/bar
App B

36. Platform Reference Architecture

37. 37
Digital Enterprise
Reference Architecture

38. Enterprise Reference Architecture
Analytics
Continuous-*
Security &
Access Management
API / Service discovery
Dev toolsDevops tools
Service router
API Gateway
Core
Microservices
Data
Container(s)
Delivery channels Digital Products
Messaging Channels Integration
MicroservicesExisting Services

39. Enterprise API Marketplaces and Platform
External Developers (Partners)
Other BU Developers
(Inter BU Access)
Internal BU Developers
(Intra BU Access)
BU 1 API Marketplace BU 2 API Marketplace BU 3 API Marketplace BU n API Marketplace
BU 1 API Management
(Dedicated On-prem
Deployment)
BU 2 API Management
(Private Cloud Tenant)
BU 3 API Management
(WSO2 API Cloud
Tenant)
BU n API Management
(Other APIM Platform
Tenant)
Private Cloud Public Cloud
Enterprise
Enterprise API Marketplace
BU 1 BU 2 BU 3 BU n

40. Platform Governance

41. “What was once a rich
selection of blogs and
websites has been
compressed under the
powerful weight of a few
dominant platforms. This
concentration of power
creates a new set of
gatekeepers, allowing a
handful of platforms to
control which ideas and
opinions are seen and
shared.”
- Tim Berners-Lee
https://webfoundation.org/2018/03/web-
birthday-29/
Source: https://beta.techcrunch.com/2018/03/12/platform-power-is-crushing-the-web-warns-berners-lee/

42. Platform Governance
• Participatory governance
• Governance by stakeholders
• E.g Youtube, Wikipedia content mgt.
• Feedback loops
• Rating systems
• Transparency
• Policy
• PSD2, GDPR, BCBS 249
42

43. 43
Building an
enterprise
API marketplace
driven business
platform
Define
API
Strategy
Define
Technology
Strategy
Facilitate
Consumers
Engage and
Empower
Producers
Evangelize
Incentives
Monetize
and
Analyze
Govern
and
Manage

44. THANK YOU
wso2.com
THANK YOU
wso2.com