Forecast: Cloudy with a Chance of Failure

Current economic conditions continue to favor the cloud computing paradigm. Although surprisingly, private cloud adoption by large organizations is out-pacing that of consumers and smaller businesses, companies of all size are looking to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) as a venue for business growth rather then simple savings. Cloud computing may change the economics of resource ownership, but a business can't grow by savings alone.

Simply put, you virtualized IT operations in the cloud, deployed a SaaS application stack and saved some money. Now what?  With growing adoption of hybrid cloud architecture and a proliferation of browser clients and new computing platforms like tablets and smart phones, many organizations are looking for ways to turn their IT assets into a platform for cloud-enabled business services.  The main challenge is how to make the transition to platform provider quickly and win over the hearts and minds of users and application developers in the process.

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It's the Interface, Stupid!

Critical to success of cloud computing and effective SaaS platform delivery is the Application Programming Interface. From a business perspective, the cloud API allows organizations to leverage existing assets accelerating product development, improving revenues and market knowledge. A structured programming interface provides a way to expose complete business functionality to application developers in a controlled, cost-effective fashion.

This approach also has the potential to dramatically alter the economics of application development. Rather then invest time and resources into developing and maintaining proprietary front-end applications companies can provide open access to their business services, allowing other vendors and developers to build applications, thereby tapping into a larger community of users and reducing their own development cost. The front-end applications can therefore, keep up with evolving computing platforms, browser features, tablets and smart phones. As such, the application programming interface is quickly becoming the focal point of cloud computing architecture.

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The New API Economy

So what does this new world look like? Many in the IT community have been talking about the new API economy. As the Internet continues to change all industries on a global scale, it is the APIs are becoming the driving force behind change. Many companies can now offer services and products anywhere in the world without the need to own distribution resources, package or ship anything.  

The application developer community is changing as well. Mash-ups and composite, service-oriented applications, built by combining content and functions from multiple service platforms are increasingly becoming the norm. Application development is no longer restricted to company employees, and may include a community of partners or outside developers with new ideas about creating value. 

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The cloud API is an integral part of Social Networking and Media applications like Twitter, the Facebook community and YouTube. Amazon's Web Services (AWS) cloud computing platform is another example of a platform that started out exclusively as an API offer. The same approach enabled the current smart phone revolution we are seeing with iPhone, iPad, Android and numerous emerging tablet devices.

In capital markets a number of financial firms are offering access to their platform through a set of cloud-enabled services. Traders interested in using an automated trading system or developing their own trading applications can take advantage of API offered by companies like E-Trade and TD Ameritrade, that provide users with powerful capabilities for trading, real-time data streaming and historical market data. The open nature of these platforms allows application developers to drive innovation by capitalizing on the synergy between capabilities offered by multiple service providers.

An API driven economy presents a radical paradigm shift from traditional, siloed application design to a more fluid approach, allowing developers to build applications upon an application fabric that consists of service components hosted by a variety of providers. Applications that assimilate functionality from disparate service providers are changing how we interact socially and how we conduct business, ushering in the brave, new API centric world.

Get. There. Faster.

The Service Application Engine™ provides a number of critical capabilities empowering the next generation application developers with tools to take advantage of the API driven economy.  The engine provides the following benifits: