Survey Indicates Key API Trends

Mashery, the company that delivers API management solutions for enterprises, today announced the results of a survey which indicates some key trends in the API market. As IT moves more and more towards platform services, APIs are becoming key to the very success of a business. Exposing APIs may be a child’s play for many developers but managing it is a hard problem. Issues like security, analytics, etc. are key to a solid API strategy. Thats why we are seeing a niche but active marketplace around APIs. Companies like Mashery, Apigee, etc. are targeting this problem, taking the heavy lifting out of the API provider.

Mashery conducted the survey of industry leaders at Mashery’s Business of APIs conferences held at different parts of the world. Some of the key insights from the survey are:

64 percent of API providers cite ‘fostering third-party innovation’ as a top priority for 2011. I would even say that a robust API is going to be the differentiator between the winners and losers in the coming years. APIs are key and get ready to open up your service through them or perish. A vibrant third party ecosystem is a must. Just see how Twitter is still a success in spite of their downtimes and lack of good business model
API providers say they’re twice as likely to define ‘getting on as many devices as possible’ (41 percent) as a focus over ‘one killer app on a single device’ (16 percent)
While almost all API providers polled (95 percent) are allowing their APIs to be consumed by a combination of internal and external developers, only three percent focused on internal-only developers and two percent focused solely on third-party
One-third of all providers use APIs to drive social media efforts. In alignment with strong numbers supporting development of third-party innovation, 32 percent of API providers define (cautious) exploration of opening data as a priority for the upcoming year
Mobile applications were the biggest driver for API development over the past year
41 percent of respondents saying that the release of more APIs was responsible for growth in 2010

Well, these are obvious trends which industry observers are aware based on their interactions with both the API providers and developer community. This survey goes on to further establish the trend. This gist of the survey shows that APIs are getting more and more traction as organizations (of all kind) recognize the trend towards platforms based world and the role of APIs in determining the winners and losers in such a world.