Everyone seeks omnichannel experiences today. With the disruption of Web3 looming large, the only way for you to tap into people’s imagination is by offering them the feel of maximum connectivity. What could be better than developing APIs that bridge the gap between the plethora of services across the world wide web?
According to reports, the global market for API management is likely to reach USD 8.2 Billion by 2027. So, now is the time to find the product-market gap, develop APIs that pull actionable insights for your customers (both B2B and B2C) or allow them to have meaningful and enjoyable experiences. There are multi-million dollar companies like Stripe and Twillo that have earned revenues by just selling their API services.
APIs can help businesses earn both direct and indirect revenue streams. Let’s talk about some direct avenues first.
APIs can help businesses earn both direct and indirect revenue streams. Let’s talk about some direct avenues first.
A holistic API management approach can bring indirect revenue streams through retention. Your customers don’t have to seek your competitor’s services if they get everything under one umbrella. For example, if you create social media-centric APIs for marketers, you need to make sure your value proposition covers all the challenges whose solutions marketers seek.
These could be challenges related to daily metrics, demographics of visitors, trending content, keyword-specific search queries, incoming and outgoing visitors, etc. Social media platforms offer analytics tools; however, marketers seldom get a clear picture, and some questions remain answered. An end-to-end and meaningful API-based service can be a boon to their goals and help you generate revenues. This is just one example, but the same applies to domains far and wide.
Heavyweight, single-environment software solutions lounging on-premises are so early 21st century. We live in a world of connectivity, and in keeping up with the pace, the industrial approach to digital solutions must also shift from local to global.
We are all aware of cloud connectivity and are used to using payment gateways, booking portals, and every application that thrives on API. A microservice architecture aims to break down a heavy, hard-to-deploy solution (reference point: an ERP or a CRM) into smaller parts to facilitate easy management. The objective of APIs is to maintain communication between these microservices.
Now, suppose you are running a business. In that case, you may feel like you are content with your current on-premise solution that is perhaps handling accounting, human resources, company-wide communication, etc. But think of what you lose by not connecting to cloud infrastructures bolstered by APIs and microservices architecture. You are losing out on the rich data they may bring you to optimize processes. Not to mention, deploying them is way more cost-effective than developing and maintaining monolithic software solutions.
Still not convinced? Look into what other businesses from North America, Asia-Pacific, Japan, and Europe are saying. Vanson Bourne recently conducted a survey of 500 senior technology decision-makers across the said regions. (89%) senior technology leaders say their “organizations are currently using a mix of monolithic architectures and microservices or have already fully transitioned to entirely distributed architectures.”
More specifically, 54% of respondents said that even the services they operate on-premises are connected to cloud services like Microsoft Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud Platform. Adopting API and microservices integration will establish the relevance of these businesses in the coming days. If not, they fear the risks of losing out to a competitor that’s turning digital transformation on its head.
So, which areas can you optimize as a business by embracing an API-centric microservices architecture?
Company-wide operations
Customer-centric services
Let’s start with breaking down the phrases “operational resiliency” and “delivery acceleration” of software solutions. Software resilience refers to the system’s ability to weather unexpected hiccups. Developers achieve this by building a fault-tolerance code embedded into the infrastructure in anticipation of possible glitches. A resilient solution can run partially despite a single-point failure.
The second concern for businesses is accelerating the delivery of software solutions to stay abreast of the competition. This means you must launch a digital solution for your customers faster than your competitor and stay ahead of the curve.
Microservices architecture can achieve software resilience and delivery acceleration, unlike heavyweight monolithic systems that are difficult to scale and deploy. What is a microservice architecture composed of? Well, it is a conglomerate of small independent solutions that communicate with each other through APIs and runs the show autonomously.
“Microservices architectures make applications easier to scale and faster to develop, enabling innovation and accelerating time-to-market for new features.”
Source – Amazon Web Services
You can create a monolithic solution for your customers. But here’s the problem: it is already code-heavy. You can’t add new features without burdening the system further and slowing it down. Even in the case of a partial glitch with a monolithic system, you have to work on fixing the infrastructure instead of just focusing on the root cause.
On the other hand, microservices enable a faster flow of value, reduce delivery costs, and improve performance. Think of microservices as a federation as opposed to a monarchy.