1. Develop APIs That Work Properly for the Organization
Leverage APIs to connect your systems in today’s web-based world.

2. Our understanding of the problem
CIOs looking for a way to improve quality and development throughput to support business priorities.
Application development managers who want to understand best practices with API development.
QA and test managers who need to create a testing practice for APIs.
Determine where the use of APIs can enable potential business benefits.
Implement effective, design, development, testing and monitoring techniques for API development.
Alignment of API development with business priorities.
Step-by-step approach on how to apply best-practice design and development techniques as it relates to API development.
Preparation for ongoing evolution of APIs through monitoring and analysis of usage patterns.

3. Executive summary
Organizations are looking for ways to leverage web APIs in order to increase app quality, code reusability, and improved development throughput.
Organizations are looking for opportunities to create an application ecosystem which can expose internal services across the organization and/or external business partners.
Make web API development a strategic competency that is critical to enabling speed of development, quality of applications, reusability, innovation, and business alignment.
Design your web API as a product to be consumed which will promote speed of development and service reuse.
Incrementally optimize the design, development, testing, and monitoring of your APIs to cover all use cases in the long term.
Web APIs are regularly designed for short-term code reuse. When they eventually break, the redevelopment effort is significant.
Web APIs are commonly tested using functional testing through an application’s user interface. This ignores other testing techniques that are available, resulting in missed test cases.
Define the business purpose of the web API and the common uses cases that it will service.
Understand the development techniques are required to develop an effective web API based on Info-Tech’s web API development framework.
Continually improve your web API development approach to demonstrate to business stakeholders the value your web API provides.

4. Guided Implementation Info-Tech Involvement Degree of Customization
Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs
Consulting
Onsite Workshop
Guided Implementation
“Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”
DIY Toolkit
Info-Tech Involvement
“We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.”
“Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.”
“Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”
Degree of Customization
Diagnostics and consistent methodologies throughout all four options

5. Best-Practice Toolkit Guided Implementations
Develop APIs That Work Properly for the Organization
– Project Overview
Examine the opportunities web APIs can enable
Design and develop a web API
Test the web API
Monitor and continuously optimize the web API
Best-Practice Toolkit
1.1 Verify how your web API initiatives support your overall business objectives.
2.1.1 Understand how your web API fits into your system architecture.
2.1.2 Define high-level design details.
2.1.3 Define your process workflows and business rules.
2.1.4 Map the relationships among data tables through ERDs.
2.1.5 Document your web API data flow diagrams.
2.1.6 Identify the integration risks, security gaps, bottlenecks, and other risks in your data flow.
2.1.7 Define your objects by effectively referencing your data model.
3.1 Create test cases using model, synthetic, and scenario-based test design techniques.
3.2 Create a test plan for your web API.
4.1 Identify roles for your API development projects.
4.2 Develop governance for web API development.
4.3 Measure the value of your web API project.
Guided Implementations
Determine what value your web APIs offer.
Develop a process for designing your web APIs to determine your endpoints.
Determine how to develop your web APIs with considerations made for how it will be consumed.
Develop a process for testing your web APIs.
Develop a process for monitoring your web APIs for continuous optimization.
Onsite Workshop
Module 1:
Examine the opportunities web APIs can enable.
Module 2:
Design your web API.
Develop your web API.
Module 3:
Test your web API.
Module 4:
Monitor and continuously optimize your web API.
Phase 1 Results:
Identification of web API benefits.
Phase 2 Results:
Process flow, ERD, and data flow models.
URLs/objects identified.
Phase 3 Results:
Web API test plan.
Phase 4 Results:
IT governance and process governance models for web API management.

6. Workshop Overview Workshop Day
Contact your account representative or for more information.
This workshop can be deployed as either a three-day engagement depending on the client’s level of completed preparation prior to the facilitator’s arrival onsite.
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Workshop Day
Workshop Preparation
Verify how your web API initiatives support your overall business objectives.
Understand how your web API fits into your system architecture.
Define high-level design details.
Itinerary
Define your process workflows and business rules.
Map the relationships among data tables through ERDs.
Document your web API data flow diagrams.
Identify the integration risks, security gaps, bottlenecks, and other risks in your data flow.
Define your objects by effectively referencing your data model.
Create test cases using model, synthetic, and scenario-based test design techniques.
Create a test plan for your web API.
Identify roles for your API development projects.
Develop governance for web API development.
Measure the value of your web API project.
The light blue slides at the end of each section highlight the key activities and exercises that will be completed during the engagement with our analyst team.

7. Use these icons to help direct you as you navigate this research
Use these icons to help guide you through each step of the blueprint and direct you to content related to the recommended activities.
Guided Implementation
Signifies an opportunity to speak with an Info-Tech analyst to receive tailored advice for your organization on the completion of this project.
Workshop Activity
Indicates that there are further details regarding the completion of this project while working in workshop setting.
Info-Tech Insight
A symbol of unique insight from an Info-Tech analyst that relates to the completion of the current step of the project.

8. Realize the importance of web APIs in the technology landscape today
As applications have become more distributed, technologies continued to evolve to allow for more scalable ways to develop APIs. Web APIs are now the forefront for web service communication between and within enterprise applications.
Monolithic Application Libraries
Any change required would necessitate a recompilation of the entire application.
CORBA/IIOP
SOAP
REST ∞
Implementation was complex and sometimes non- implementable.
Costly to implement.
Inconsistent APIs across providers.
Consistent approach for web services to make function calls using GET, PUT, POST, DELETE.
Technological Advancements in APIs…
Application Architecture Evolution
Where in web services is REST being applied today?
Microservices Architecture
Enterprise Integration & Development
Cloud Services (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS)

9. Process Orchestration
The growing demand for efficient processes is driving the need for better integration among services and applications
Business processes cross applications and services as well as leverage data assets to deliver functionality to users and integrate partners.
Process Orchestration
Applications
Data
Infrastructure
ESB
Internal Web APIs
Partner Gateway
Business Partners
Business Users
Web Servers
APIs – a programmatic interface into an application’s functions, data, or process that operates over a network.
ESB – a software architecture model used for designing and implementing the interaction and communication between mutually interacting software applications.
Process Orchestration – management of multi-interaction processes across business applications and people.
Application – running instance of a business software program operated by a user or a running server program that responds to requests.
Partner gateway services and web servers act as a pipeline, transferring information from the business to clients and business partners.
Data – an application data repository.
Infrastructure – the underlying foundation of the system, which includes basic support services and hardware.
Architectural Components
Transfer Protocol
External Web APIs
Transfer Protocol
Info-Tech Insight
Organizations that adopt a Service-Oriented Architecture, without proper integration implementation, end up with SOS: Service-Oriented Spaghetti. Use web APIs to map, manage, and control service interactions regardless of underlying implementation to deliver appropriate functionality to business users.

10. The goal of web APIs is improved quality and reusability
Web APIs are instruments which enable your development teams to increase the quality of applications and adopt a “code once, use many” development approach.
Your Organizational Needs
Web APIs enable development teams to reuse existing code which enables faster development.
You need a way to develop and maintain applications faster. Business users want applications delivered faster, placing pressure on IT to quickly release high quality software (develop more with less time).
The business expects applications to be flexible. With a greater number of organizations embarking on mobile and cloud development projects, application functions and services are constantly changing to reflect the evolving business requirements.
IT needs a way to integrate business systems to better support internal processes. Business processes often touch multiple systems which means application integration is an essential component of delivering value. 1
Web APIs enable development teams to retain flexibility.
Benefits 2 3
Web APIs enable ease of transfer of critical data across the organization.

11. Understand the importance of web APIs in the marketplace
Web APIs are an essential component that enable the strategy of an organization.
The apps, data, and APIs that are driving this digital transformation are not just enabling business; they are becoming its very fabric. Whether digital native or analog immigrant, today’s digital pioneers recognize that an app strategy is the key to customer engagement, user experience, and business success.
An API is only as valuable as the data or functionality to which it provides access. So if an organization delivers a particular core competence…it stands to reason that the most valuable APIs this organization could provide link to and drive volume to exactly these core competencies.
– Steve Willmott. “The Five Axioms of the API Economy, Axiom #4 – Organizations must provide core competence through APIs.” 3scale
– Promod Hague. “Businesses must embrace the programmable world. Or die.” Fortune.com
In an effort to leverage the mobile channel more effectively, enterprises are increasingly exposing data to mobile developers via APIs. Traditional web service based on SOAP and designed for a world prior to ubiquitous mobile computing is being transformed to REST APIs that are better suited for mobile applications.
Industry Facts
The first annual API community survey indicates:
The most common protocols are REST (91.9%) and SOAP (41.9%).
The most three important factors for APIs are complete and accurate documentation, service availability/uptime, and service responsiveness/performance.
– Peter Crocker. “Mobile Apps in the API Economy: Avoiding the Mobile Cliff.” Smith’s Point Analytics
APIs are the new dial tone…APIs are the connective tissue of everything you do.
– Jeff Lawson, cofounder of and Chief Executive of Twilio as quoted by Dean Takahashi. “The new dial tone: How the API economy accelerates the growth of cloud apps.” The API economy panel at CloudBeat
DuVander, Adam. “API Consumers want reliability, documentation, and community”. ProgrammableWeb

12. Web APIs should enable business strategy execution
There are real above-the-line and below-the-line benefits that web APIs can unlock.
Most significant business motivation for using web APIs:
Most significant technical motivation for using web APIs:
75% of organizations want to connect to more partners.
>80% of organizations want to integrate applications.
APIs enable flexibility in terms of partners connecting to web services…APIs let you put business logic and services in a centralized spot. This logic can be reused and it becomes incremental to expand to different devices.
Organizations using web APIs found that they:
Increased their customer/partner reach by 50%.
Increased the number of platforms reached by 57%.
Increased the number of apps built from web APIs by 50%.
Organizations using web APIs found that they:
Increased web/device traffic by 70%.
Increased web service usage by 58%.
…APIs enable an increase in traffic and usage by enabling developers and partners to more easily develop apps that tap into a company’s online services.
Organizations using web APIs found that they:
Reduced the time it took to onboard partners by 30%.
Increased partner productivity by 30%.
…APIs lead to developer/partner productivity improvements and create an environment that supports innovation.
Source: Fern et al. “Web API Study: The Benefits of APIs in the App Economy.” Hurwitz & Associates

13. Unfortunately not everyone is doing web API development effectively
Both development and runtime issues prevent high adoption of web APIs, leading to less than adequate business benefits realization.
It’s all too common that web APIs are not adopted due to development and runtime issues the APIs cause for consumers. Bottom-line: consumers won’t come back to your API if it returns a negative experience the first time around.
At 22:30 CST, the FedEx Shipping API became unavailable. Due to FedEx’s lack of proper timeouts, this is causing requests to backup for both the Shipping Service and all Storefronts.
It is critical for your organization to adopt the appropriate development practices for web APIs in order to minimize the following problems from occurring.
– Bigcommerce Status Report. 17 Jan
DEVELOPMENT ISSUES
…requests to most Google APIs resulted in 500 error response messages…a configuration change was inadvertently released to our production environment without first being released to the testing environment. The change specified an invalid address for the authentication servers in production.
Bad documentation: API consumers don’t know how to use the web API properly.
Versioning problems: API changes lead to compatibility breaking causing a lot of rework for anyone using the API.
Unexpected behavior: When API changes are made, the interface remains compatible, but the internal logic has changed, causing retesting and recoding for API consumers.
– Google Developers Blog. 3 May 2013.
RUNTIME ISSUES
Indicators of a Poor Web API
Poor performance: The API takes too long to execute or has severe limitations on how it should be used.
Version changes break compatibility: Deployment causes several integrations to break because of lack of compatibility.
Intermittent failures: Errors that are hard to replicate but known to exist.
API consumers request a copy of your data (rather than using your API to access it).
API consumers are not informed of changes made to your API.
API consumers do not find your API easy to use.

14. Use web APIs to enable below-the-line process improvement
Adopting an API-enabled application ecosystem enables your organization to improve internal processes. Utilizing APIs to abstract access to backend services within your organization creates a fast-moving, flexible infrastructure for your developers to work with.
Using web APIs across the organization can help build awareness of what services and data files are available for business units to use.
If used correctly, APIs can enable your business to organize internal systems to reduce maintenance costs and support the creation of innovative products and services.
Data access can often become frustrating and complex when working with multiple business groups.
Used appropriately, your API speeds up system integrations for improved business agility and provides a common path for transactions to flow from which can potentially lead to a more efficient allocation of resources.
APIs can not only enable your business to manage internal processes, but also potentially lead to creating new business value chains by arranging existing services, data, and functionalities into new and valuable configurations.
A study conducted by McKinsey Global Institute estimated that organizations can improve productivity levels by 20 to 25 percent by improving internal collaboration through the use of an internal API.
Source: Boyd. Mark. “6 Business Benefits of Private APIs”. Nordic APIs Blog

15. Use web APIs to enable above-the-line revenue generation
Consider the possibility that your internal services can be monetized through your web API. Consider how valuable your internal services can be to external third parties and business partners. Services like data transfer and partner integration are potential opportunities where your organization can take advantage of using an API.
It is important to consider what type of monetization model you will take on, what your API should charge, and who will pay for API usage. Depending on what services you provide with your API, certain methods of charging API consumers may be more appropriate than others.
Pay As You Go
Tiered Pricing
Freemium
In order to monetize your API, it is critical to understand how your API is being used. And the way to understand how your API is being used is through appropriate monitoring tools and metrics. Deploy a few monitoring initiatives at first and increase the level of monitoring as adoption of your API increases.
$10/month for first 500 transactions
Free Trial Upsell…
Pay for what you use.
$0.80/month for next 100 transactions…
Try before buying.
Unit-Based Pricing
Transaction Fee
$70 for 1300 transactions
$60 for 900 transactions
$0.05 every time you call me.
$50 for 500 transactions
Source: Pedro, Bruno. “How to Monetize your API”. Nordic APIs
Fixed prices per number of service calls.
Source: Musser, John. “API Business Models.” API Strategy Conference