ProgrammableWeb about API adoption “we are still in the super early days”

The ProgrammableWeb is a platform that keeps track of public APIs and mashups and as such is a great reference source. They also maintain a useful blog and you can query a lot of interesting data from their API directory. ProgrammableWeb was recently purchased by MuleSoft from Alcatel-Lucent, which TechCrunch coined as “marking the telco’s departure from a core API Community.”

The API Economist interviewed John Musser (Founder of ProgrammableWeb) on March 13, 2013. The interview was insightful regarding current dynamics in the API landscape. Find a summary of the key points of the interview below or read the whole interview “Meet John Musser, API Pioneer” on the API Economist.

• The total number numbers of API registrations are getting bigger but are still doubling (as of today (Sept. 16, 2013) 9970 APIs are registered, see also the graph at the end of this post).
• There is a growth in new sectors and new verticals observable.
• More mobile use cases are added. APIs are more and more part of a wider device or mobile strategy.
• APIs are a crucial enabler of cloud computing as they represent the glue between remote elements.
• Future growth sectors are envisaged as being related to sectors like enterprise, finance, and telephony. Telcos are seen to be having an enormous potential (especially regarding functionality and data in their backend) which is not yet exploited. Manufacturing is growing rather slowly.
• Traditionally SOAP was more strongly adopted in enterprise sector, but recently enterprises tend to use REST. Although in most cases this distinction is not relevant as the access protocol (SOAP or REST) is wrapped in SDKs.
• Some hyper-competitive sectors (such as retail) may jump into open APIs without a clear strategy risking failure. Brick and mortar companies had to get back into the game quickly facing severe competition from eCommerce companies.
• Typical areas where open APIs are the modus operandi are online mapping services and entertainment services (video, photo, or music). In social networks open APIs were less typical. Musser argues that the success of facebook over MySpace was due to a correctly defined and executed open API strategy.
• An interesting case study about RunKeeper was presented. Runkeeper started as a company that provided a simple mobile app being an API consumer but evolved to a service platform becoming an API provider.
• Generally, regarding API adoption “We are still in the super early days” according to Musser.

ProgrammableWeb also regularly publish a blog post when they pass API registration milestones. The last one was passing the 9000 mark – see “9,000 APIs: Mobile Gets Serious”. From that post I took the below graph and annotated it with the various milestones which should make the growth clearer.

(Source with my adaptations: ProgrammableWeb post “9,000 APIs: Mobile Gets Serious”) 

Another point discussed in the interview was the access mechanism or protocol – i.e., REST or SOAP. The following graph is from the ProgrammableWeb API directory dashboard and shows the current dominance of REST (69%) over SOAP (22%).

(Source: ProgrammableWeb API directory dashboard)

Some of my key-takeaways were that APIs can facilitate wider reach, scalability, and add a further dimension to your funnel. An API strategy embedded in your wider strategy is necessary to properly plan and execute according to your specific objectives – and we are still in very early days. Good.

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