Programmers used to be the only people excited about APIs, but now a growing number of companies see them as a hot new product channel. This concise guide describes the tremendous business potential of APIs, and demonstrates how you can use them to provide valuable services to clients, partners, or the public via the Internet. You’ll learn all the steps necessary for building a cohesive API business strategy from experts in the trenches.
Facebook and Twitter APIs continue to be extremely successful, and many other companies find that API demand greatly exceeds website traffic. This book offers executives, business development teams, and other key players a complete roadmap for creating a viable API product.
- Learn about the rise of APIs and why your business might need one
- Understand the roles of asset owners, providers, and developers in the API value chain
- Build strategies for designing, implementing, and marketing your product
- Devise an effective process for security and user management
- Address legal issues, such as rights management and terms of use
- Manage traffic and user experience with a reliable operating model
- Determine the metrics you need to measure your API’s success
Many of the highest traffic sites get more than half of their traffic not through the browser but through the APIs they have created. Salesforce.com (more than 50%) and Twitter (more than 75% fall into this category. Ebay gets more than 8 billion API calls a month., Facebook and Google, have dozens of APIs that enable both free services and e-commerce, get more than 5 billion API calls each day. Other companies like NetFlix have expanded their service of streaming movies over the the web to dozens of devices using API. At peak times, more than 20 percent of all traffic is accounted for by Netflix through its APIs., Companies like Sears and E-Trade are opening up their catalogs and other services to allow developers and entrepreneurs to create new marketing experiences. Making an API work to create a new channel is not just a matter of technology. An API must be considered in terms of business strategy, marketing, and operations as well as the technical aspects of programming., This book, written by Greg Brail, CTO of Apigee, and Brian Mulloy, VP of Products, captures the knowledge of all these areas gained by Apigee, the leading company in supporting the rollout of high traffic APIs.