APIs is the Way to Go, You bet!

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Not sure if you are aware or not, but the world is waking up to keywords such as API-First, API-Driven Development (ADD) etc. And, this is creating confusion in application developers mind when they hear counter argument against their expression that they have always been doing API driven development where they use to write proper interfaces to their implementations. What is different from then to now? And, what do they need to do differently? But the more important thing to ask is what has led to everyone talking about API driven development?

Following are some of the reasons (also, key technology trends of 2014) why APIs has been getting so much attention off late:

• Mobile is the way to go: First and foremost, no one can deny with the fact that everyone wants to access all that he could access from the desktop, on his mobile device. And, if he gets a way out of it, he access the application/website mostly from his mobile device. Some of the classic examples are social web applications such as facebook and twitter which are mostly accessed by mobile device unlike few years back when they were accessed from desktop web browser. Welcome mobile app/mobile websites which uses APIs at its core. This is the trend which is going to stay and one of the key technology trend of 2014. That being the reality, enterprises are forced to maintain theie website/web application version and also the mobile app version. Thus, one of the trend is to move through API version and reducing heavy MVC based website/web application to the list WEB UI which gets data from APIs.
• Cloud getting deeper and darker: With more and more company moving their application on the cloud, and offering the customized services to different customers, the need to do it through APIs has become important like never before. Look at the scenario: You have got a new customer which wants a little customization on top of existing services. This can be done easily by assembling the existing APIs with the new custom API thereby delivering the customized services.
• Need for business processes to get closely aligned with IT: IT all these years has led to prevelance of monolitihic applications in different line of businesses (LOBs). This is getting difficult for companies to innovate new service offerings for newer customers due t large, heavy monolithic LOB applications. Thus, businesses are deciding to carve innovative solutions which can cut across multiple LOB applications. And, this can be done using BPM technology stack (workflow) and making use APIs on top of existing applications.