The Business of APIs:
Best Practices
Courtesy of IBM and Lightwell
Executive Summary
Many enterprises are planning their journey and participation in the API economy. Some view this plan as an IT initiative, but those who truly understand the potential are attacking it with a combination of business and IT perspectives. This content from our partner, IBM, focuses on best practices to drive success using this blend of business and IT.
Determining an API economy strategy and planning a roadmap have several significant benefits:
Consolidating and standardizing common APIs—or simply business services—within an organization
Lowering cost of operations by having a central repository and index of enterprise business services such as retrieve credit score
Accelerating digital projects and improving time to market with safe, quick access to business services by both internal and external parties
Identifying a partnership ecosystem—especially outside your own industry—to formulate new value-add products and services to be more competitive
Defining a new business model for monetization purposes such as a mobile marketplace; that is, curating your company’s business capabilities aggregated with your partners’ business capabilities to provide a diverse range of related or complementary services
In this ebook, we share best practices and lessons learned based on interactions between IBM and its clients. We focus on the core nontechnical aspects of executing an API initiative, including:
Business
Strategy
Domain Ownership
and Organizational
Structure
Governance
Model
Monetization
API
Identification
Communication
Legal and Privacy
Success Criteria
and Metrics
Technical
Governance
For each area, we describe the issues and offer recommendations. In addition, we provide sample worksheets to help you organize your approach within that segment of the initiative.
This ebook is intended for business and IT leadership interested in jump-starting their API initiative by learning about best practices being used by other enterprises. It is not meant to be introductory, and prior knowledge of the basics of business APIs and the API economy is expected.
Introduction
Business Strategy
Domain Ownership and
Organizational Structure
Governance Model
Communication
Legal and Privacy
Success Criteria and Metrics
The Business of APIs: Introduction
Emerging entrants and companies initiating new, market-changing offerings are disrupting many industries. Here are just a few examples:
- Apple Pay is disrupting payment services
- Smart cars are disrupting the automotive industry
- Online commerce enterprises such as Alibaba are investing in the property and casualty insurance industry, disrupting it with new service models and offerings
- Financial technology companies (fintechs) such as Betterment and Bats Chi-X have disrupted the high barrier to entering financial markets
- Uber has disrupted transportation
- Netflix has disrupted the media and entertainment industry
Click to Navigate:
Introduction
Business Strategy
Domain Ownership and
Organizational Structure
Governance Model
Communication
Legal and Privacy
Success Criteria and Metrics
The Business of APIs: Introduction (continued)
APIs give companies a mechanism to become the disrupter, or at a minimum to more rapidly respond when a disrupter enters their market segment. They offer an opportunity to bring significant value to a business. To capture this value, business and IT need to work together on the API initiative. This ebook is intended to address the less-technical—but no less challenging—issues of an API initiative:
- Business strategy
- Domain ownership and organizational structure
- Governance model
- Monetization
- API identification
- Communication
- Legal and privacy
- Success criteria and metrics
- Technical governance
Click to Navigate:
Introduction
Business Strategy
Domain Ownership and
Organizational Structure
Governance Model
Communication
Legal and Privacy
Success Criteria and Metrics
The Business of APIs: Introduction (continued)
Often, the early phases of an API initiative are led by IT, which in turn is focused on the technical implementation, architecture and security implications of adding APIs to the current IT environment.
All of these topics are important but are not covered in this ebook. Visit the IBM API Connect™ site on IBM developerWorks® and the IBM API Connect product website to learn how IBM can assist you with these technical aspects.
Additionally, this ebook is targeted toward enterprises that see APIs as a platform strategy, not an individual project. Individual project orientation may result in a quick initial project, but will not provide the best practices to drive the repeatability required to move forward at the enterprise level. Many of the most successful businesses using APIs view them instead as a corporate channel to market—a strategic asset.
Throughout the ebook, we include sample worksheets to help you gather and organize your approach to each topic. Some of these worksheets have fields prefilled with suggestions. You can use these worksheets to organize the initiative with your own data and choose to use or disregard the samples shown.
Click to Navigate:
