1. Software is Eating the
World, APIs are Eating
Software
Steven Willmott
3scale networks
@3scale - http://www.3scale.net

2. On Demand API Infrastructure:
http://3scale.net @3scale
Powering 200+ APIs
Billions API Calls / Month

3. “Software is Eating the
World”
Marc Andreessen – WSJ / August 2011

4. Almost every major industry is
becoming software driven
MusicRetail Video Telephony
Meaning:
…

5. Examples
Lytro: “Software Defined
Cameras”
Philips Hue: “Software Controlled
Lighting”
Amazon: “Software Driven
Retail”
Pixar: “Software powered
animation”

6. APIs eat Software

7. Meaning:
1
2
APIs are the key glue that make this
software remotely addressable
APIs provide a myriad of new external
building blocks to speed up and enrich
software development
3
If you do these things together special
things happen

8. Remotely Addressable =
Opening up some network
addressable interface

9. Examples
London Transport: Open Data
Evernote: “Platformization”
Netflix: “Massive Distribution”
JCI: “Software Controlled
Buildings”
Thousands
Of Devices

10. Adoption is across all sectors

11. Diversity: Sectors
Games
Blogging
Transport
Dating
Dictionary
Events
Job Search
Payment
Real Estate
PIM
News
Security
Telephony
Credit: Sample Categories Programmable Web

12. Diversity: Sizes of Companies
Credit: API Survey / John Sheehan 2012

13. Diversity: Business Models
Credit: 3scale 1000 APIs Survey 2012
• Only 24% “API is
the product”
• The Vast
Majority power
non-API Business
Models

14. Software is essentially useless without
remotely addressable interfaces

15. There are downsides too opening
APIs too
• Security is key
• Scalability needs to be
built in
• It requires long term
support
• Design can be hard
• New type of business
interaction
Still: the Upsides
are Compelling
• Vendors can Help
• In many cases some
of the work is
already done

16. How are APIs Changing
Application Development?

17. APIs are the new Libs
“In computer science, a library is a collection
of implementations of behavior, written in
terms of a language, that has a well-defined
interface by which the behavior is invoked”
Credit: Wikipedia

18. Speed (Time to Market)
e.g. + Devops Borat
e.g.
(Top Mashup on
Progr Web)

19. Richness / Functionality
e.g.
e.g.

20. Offboarding
e.g.
e.g.
(Rich Photo Effects
For Mobile by SDK)
(Monitoring System
in the Cloud)

21. Reliability
e.g.
e.g.
(Email by API)
(Amazon S3)

22. There are downsides too using
external APIs too
• Latency?
• Availability?
• Security?
• SLAs?
• Can’t Access Code
• Cost
• Service Continuity? The Upsides are
Compelling
• In most cases there
are no other ways
to solve the
problem
• Tools are emerging

23. The Sum of the Two

24. APIs Will Eat Software
Software Before 1995 Software 1995 – 2010 Software 2010 -

25. Enables specialization, focus, much
wider distribution

26. Businesses (via their
Software and APIs) are acting
as components

27. Software as Model-View-Controller
VIEW = FORM
MODEL = DATA
CONTROLLER = BUSINESS LOGIC
Model
View Controller

28. Example “Models”
Model
Data Anywhere in
any form
(copyrights / respective owners)

29. Example: Views
View
Many Delivery
Channels
(copyrights / respective owners)

30. Example: Controllers
Controller
Many Delivery
Channels
(copyrights / respective owners)

31. APIs Enable Separation & Focus
Model View Controller
Data Anywhere in
any form
Many Delivery
Channels
Third parties
operating on data
Distributed Applications

32. Software + APIs allow
Businesses to co-evolve
much faster

33. Fundamentally Different
Model of Programming
(MVC is only one model – the point is:
componentization is possible)

34. Conclusions

35. APIs Software World

36. Take Aways
1
2
The World will get Software Enabled
… and hence API Enabled
=>
Radical impact on the Software we
write and what is possible
=>
… The shift is as radical as the
emergence of the Web …

37. Thank you!
steve@3scale.net
@njyx, @3scale
We make Awesome API Management Tools:
http://www.3scale.net/