How APIs are Disrupting Business

Changing the world, one API Enterprise at a time. 

In today's installment of #BigIdeas2016, I'd like to take a quick minute to talk about how APIs are disrupting not just the tech industry, but all of business. 

Application programming interfaces or APIs, are one of the driving forces behind a lot of digital disruption out there. This is happening in part due to an open-source standards, cloud based infrastructure and mobile apps. The ordinary citizen does not realize it, but APIs are surreptitiously taking over, along with algorithms, huge segments of our lives. 

Indeed software as a service products (SaaS) have become so mainstream and so powerful, they are able to disrupt entire sectors and verticals that were previously inaccessible.

Take for instance, brick and mortar independent retail. There are over one million small stores of this nature in North America, and now there is a loyalty marketing automation that is analytics based called Thirdshelf, that accomplishes white-label marketing campaigns & triggered automated loyalty campaigns from an indie retail store to their customers with the potential to revolutionize the CLV of their high value customers, reduce churn and increase spend frequency, in-store traffic and boost sales. 

So clearly, APIs have incredible transformative powers to disrupt business. APIs and algorithms are probably also altering how we think. If a small marketing automation product can simplify an entire store's marketing (marketing department in a box), how soon will APIs and SaaS be replacing office jobs? Isn't it just a matter of time?

If APIs can now increase connectivity and enable unprecedented services and possibilities, then it means a SaaS startup can alter our lives forever, the way Slack & Trello did a few years ago, completely transforming how we communicate, collaborate and organize our activities in work teams. 

I'm excited about the possibilities of the API, and the eventual arrival of predictive analytics that can facilitate automation in our lives with more intelligence than perhaps even the most optimistic techies expected. APIs and algorithms indeed, are changing the fabric of how we see and interact with the world. 

I believe the period of 2015 till 2020, is a golden age of the API. Apps are already transforming the way we live and function and even relate to our environment. Apps like Uber, Tinder, Instagram have certainly changed things the last few years. The rising supremacy of APIs will be and has already been responsible for the destruction of some old business verticals. FinTech is poised to challenge even big financial insinuations like Big Banks. 

“The hotel industry thought it was previously disruption-proof, until AirBnB came waltzing online to empower consumer choice and to allow anyone to become hotel management.”

Remember Blockbuster and the days of renting movies? I barely do, now there's Netflix. The examples are too numerous, behind the changing of the guard is the rebellious maverick, the API. Amazon invested so much in an API approach, that communication between their own departments was done via API. 

We mustn't cry, but the decimation of brick-and-mortar bookstores was the result of Amazon's terror. Okay I am probably exaggerating, but if you think of disruption with skills to kill, the API has to be it. What was sales even like before SalesForce.com? I cannot imagine. 

The API is the little green man from the future that heralds the following sentiment: 

Technology evolves faster than our ability to adapt. - Brian Solis

 The unfathomable API does seamless integration, while facilitating consumer expectations that everything can be seamless creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of enormous importance. The speed to market deployment is a game changer. Data is mixed, analytics are everywhere and the algorithms are coming out to play. Have a good life, happy holidays. Winter is coming, no, the APIs are coming. As sure as when Star Wars comes out, that's just tomorrow. 

I'm excited, APIs are the stairway to the cloud, the backbone, the omni-source, the master architect, the darling that enables innovation, the silver pixie dust of technological magic. They represent the history of Facebook and the digital glue of the very spirit of innovation that makes other older substances crumble, the disruptive abracadabra. 

Gartner was projecting, as digital gardeners do, that last year about three-quarters of Fortune–1000 companies were using public APIs to grow their business.

Let's face it, APIs are the toys of hackathons, those parties for the youth where god knows what the hell they are doing! APIs are some crazy winged creatures called agile, digital sphinx, part startup unicorn, part evangelist dragon that has come to create new value propositions and businesses that will exist, that don't yet exist. All harvested from some divine minecraft of API landscapes, the stuff of coders, engineers and dreamers. 

If you build it, they will come. This is a metaphor of how "scrappers will come", to harvest the data of public APIs. APIs are thus treasures fought over by users, data and capacity. Some explain it as a digital paradox. Unsurprisingly, there is even a directory of public APIs. If you prefer, why not check out the 50 most useful for developers. I'm not a software engineer so I feel a bit silly talking about this, so I'll just stop now. 

Why do female coders inspire so easily?

What's your relation to APIs, Apps and algorithms? I'd like to know, comment below.