7 steps to making modern digital ecosystems with APIs

The need for businesses to embrace digital ecosystems both inside and outside their organization is widely understood. A business product that is not exposed by an API cannot easily participate in a digital ecosystem.

They solve the problem of information silos by enabling you to create reusable integrations for your applications and data internally. They also enable more efficient customer experiences and more effective partner relationships by letting an organization share relevant data externally. APIs give developers in and outside of your organization a pattern to create products and invoke services that are by their very nature dependent on your business processes, products, and IT systems. This will generate revenue both directly and indirectly.

Typically, an organization will contain both “APIs as a Product” and “Products as APIs”, the former being specially focused on monetization of the API directly and typically making up a small portion of APIs. The creation of an API Catalog, in principle, can be achieved by surveying and listing a group of digital assets and exposing them through an API Portal. However, a key part in the success of a Catalog is alignment with a broader API strategy which is in turn in alignment with a business strategy.

As such, the first steps in the creation of a Catalog is to define and confirm the business goals and products that will be enhanced by the APIs that will be created and cataloged.

Also, a broader API Strategy needs to be put in place to ensure that APIs are used in the design, automation, and testing of business functions. From a technical point of view, an API Catalog needs to support functions such as governance, documentation, discovery, developer onboarding, security, and KPIs. Here are your 7 steps:

An obvious but sub-optimal approach when defining goals for an API strategy is to start with applications and data and then work backwards from there. More desirable goals would include creating a new revenue channel, driving new business leads or removing IT bottlenecks. As a first step…

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