The Case for Autonomous APIs
The way APIs are currently developed, consumed and maintained is neither scalable nor sustainable. What seems to be a machine to machine communication is, in fact, a mechanical Turk relying upon human engineers and tech writers imperatively integrating and tightly coupling distributed systems. The human role is expensive, extremely slow and error-prone.
Furthermore, APIs providers are willingly developing and providing their API functionality in silos isolated from each other, in fear of becoming a commodity. Such behavior opens the opportunity for 3rd party vendors to become the intermediary between the API provider and consumers and to provide the uniform interface to siloed APIs.
However, the need for integration of various systems, data sources and services is growing exponentially. IoT, Machine learning, Data science, Voice assistants & interfaces, but also general AI and government regulations are both presenting new challenges and driving the boom of APIs.
It is clear, that if we are to withstand the growing demands for (and on) APIs we need radically change our approach to build interfaces in distributed systems.
In 2018 it is still customary to write API clients tightly coupled to the respective APIs and redeploy them when an API changes.
In 2018 it also becomes clear that incumbent API providers are too afraid of commoditization that their inability to act leads them loose the ground to third party vendors.
But API consumers don’t want to integrate with dozens of different APIs. If I am building an e-shop I don’t want to integrate with ten payments methods, and twenty logistics companies and then follow the API lifecycle of some thirty APIs!
Whether you want to send a payment, search for information or turn off that lights in your office, do you want first Google search for suitable API providers, then imperatively program three tightly coupled* API clients, to three various services and protocols? Or do you want to say: “Send $12 to Mark, Retrieve that information and turn off the lights”?
Enter Autonomous APIs.
*tightly coupled = API client will break when the API changes
