APIs should now be a key component of your deployment strategy. Without a widespread deployment of APIs, you can forget about deploying your final product in a timely fashion and within your budget. What does this mean for your demand versus your deployment?
You need to understand the future of APIs if you are looking to move your deployment into a space that can match the accelerated demand of the modern consumer. Here are a few of the tools that you need to take into consideration for this process to work.
Embracing API Product Management
Too many companies do not yet consider the API as a fully fledged product in and of itself. Companies that do are looking to invoke the maturing product management techniques that help to improve a company's best practices. You can expect APIs to extend into an entire life cycle from prototype to retirement, with road mapping, user communication and user feedback as essential components of the cycle.
Artificial Intelligence and Bots to Drive Adoption
2017 will be the year that AI, voice interactions and bots become a true fixture in using APIs. If you are on the cutting edge of your industry, you have already implemented these procedures and are using 2017 to accelerate the process. If you haven't, you can expect your competition to begin experimenting with interfaces based on voice as much as text, and experiences that are focused on specific apps and browsers. Whether you are adopting these techniques internally or in your final products, you will speed your deployment to match your demand.
API Consumption Will Increase
There is a continuous demand to make useful APIs accessible to people outside of the development community. Tools such as Zapier, IFTTT, Apiant and Datafire are just a few of the examples that many people are using to speed up their deployment exponentially without taking on any of the infrastructure needed to develop an API.
New API Discovery Methods
Staying ahead of your competition means staying ahead of their resource base. In some cases, companies will employee a person whose sole job is to find APIs that speed up deployment. Marketplaces such as Hitch and RapidAP will become even more important than they are today. Both external and internal APIs should be considered, as both are challenges. In order to match back in deployment, API publication should be invoked in tandem with full automation features, especially as microservices become more widely used.
Managing the Entire Lifecycle of the API
The discipline of API management will likely expand and eventually cover the entire API lifecycle. 2017 will see a higher demand for full lifecycle solutions, with standards like OAI/OAS providing even more useful interfacing between tools. As a side note, graphQL will likely become even more valuable as an API pattern in 2017, considering its high adoption level in the previous year.
Tools to Bring Together APIs, DevOps and Microservices
APIs have become considerably more integrated with microservices. The result is that deployments for cutting-edge companies have become highly automated. If you are looking to move to the bleeding edge of your industry, you should be on the lookout for micro services that are powered by APIs and managed through full automation.
IoT Security
Your deployment may be able to benefit from the specialist routers that are helping to secure APIs as well as IoT devices. Although the technology is not fully mature, progress will be quick once new design standards and patterns are created that can fully protect both types of products. This means that an office will be able to more securely proliferate IoT devices in its business, securing a faster deployment for its products.
Serverless Architecture
Microsoft, Google and Amazon are all fighting to be the first to bring serverless architecture to the mainstream, and the technology is quickly becoming a go to feature of all major cloud platforms. We may even begin to see the proliferation of meta-services, which means that equivalent code will be provided in each framework.
