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MS API Strategy Essentials Whitepaper
MS API Strategy Essentials Whitepaper
API Strategy
Essentials
Content
Getting Started 03
What Is Digital Transformation? 04
Conclusion 34
Getting S ta r ted
many organizations will struggle to keep up due to the limitations of their
digital estate and legacy systems.
3
At the core of this approach is the customer experience. For example, in
an excellent in-flight experience, the airline could anticipate a frequent
flier’s meal choice and entertainment preferences before boarding the
plane. The data to support this effort already exists within the airline’s
digital ecosystem. However, the airline’s real challenge is aligning its food
service, entertainment, and other partners around a highly personalized
travel experience by processing data from different sources.
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What is digital transformation?
Consider former retail titan Sears — their rather than rely on custom code that fails
4
Today, Amazon dominates with a thriving and ecosystems to power a digital-first
digital ecosystem. Let’s consider the full approach. To successfully shift to an
conversational capability of Amazon’s API-led approach, leaders must follow
Alexa technology used in their Echo brand best practices by executing essential
of voice-enabled personal assistants. The change management steps and adjust
Alexa technology is seamlessly reused as the organization’s mindset to align the
an on-demand service on non-Echo and digital platform and ecosystem to better
non-Amazon products. participate in the API economy. While the
process can seem daunting, MuleSoft is
To achieve this, Amazon uses a here to help.
standardized set of APIs to export
Alexa’s capabilities to an ecosystem of
W W W. S AL E S F O R C E. C O M
The API strategy blueprint consists of four stages. Each of these steps covers a critical
business and technology building block:
1 2 3 4
Evaluate, build,
Align
Establish and deploy Engage
organization
a digital strategy supporting your ecosystem
and culture
technology
5
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• Business case
1
Align stakeholders on problems, opportu-
nities, and competencies • Prototypes
• Roadmaps
• Articulate business outcomes
• Determine target audience
• Establish business models
Establish
2
across the organization • Achievement against
• Establish organization-wide values hiring plan
• Drive services-oriented culture • API consumer NPS/SAT scores
Sample deliverables/KPIs
Execute, measure, iterate
3
platform/tools apps/APIs
• Establish API architecture and • Availability/uptime ›
automation platforms Security KPIs
• Commence KPI consolidation
Evaluate, build, and dashboarding
and deploy • Activate best practices for universal API
management, governance, observability,
supporting
and discoverability
technology
6
• Build and nurture community • # Developer registrations
4
• Publish API catalog, developer portal, • # API calls
and productivity tools • # New apps developed
• Formalize training and certification offerings • Developer conversion/ retention
• Develop hackathon program
• Launch collaborative feedback loop for
Engage versioning/support
your ecosystem • Incentivize community partnership
This blueprint won’t cover all the activities involved in developing an agile digital
architecture. Nor will it touch on every bullet point across the blueprint in detail.
Instead, the blueprint will focus on the most critical action items to frame API
ecosystem development.
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While there are four distinct stages, some activities will overlap. For example, as your
organization engages with members of your ecosystem in one part of your digital
strategy, new customer demands or the latest market conditions may cause other steps
to still evolve in response.
1
Establishing your digital strategy is the relies on digital instincts and creativity
one stage in the API strategy blueprint — which can pose a challenge for
critical to the rest’s success. While the many organizations. One of the major
strategy will morph over time, it will serve challenges is that organizations struggle
as your north star for the other three to develop realistic business outcomes
stages. Creating a thriving API ecosystem (like building new customer experiences)
7
will be nearly impossible without a based on platform and ecosystem
well-defined and executive-backed thinking — since they have likely not
digital strategy. done it before.
Being open-minded to calculated risk
While you may want to engage external
partners and customers, it’s key to focus
on your internal API ecosystem first. By
developing APIs internally, businesses
reduce the limitations of their legacy
systems — transforming how they deliver
digital products, services, and
business capabilities.
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8
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Identify Business Outcomes Early
Stakeholders should take notice of their key organizational competencies. They should
also identify potential problem areas to help direct the digital strategy and establish
business outcomes. Some real-world results that organizations have targeted include:
9
company in Europe, was tasked with rolling out 60
million smart meters to accommodate the UK’s new
climate change regulations. The initiative required a
solution that would adapt quickly, connect easily, and
enable Siemens to execute its initiatives effectively
without major disruptions.
The company used an API ecosystem with the smart meter project to unlock
siloed services and data. This approach enabled mobile and web applications
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Read More>
Target Identified: Audiences
10
include software developers looking to experiences based on their needs. Doing
program new, customized user interfaces, so will drive the consumption of your
while non-coders use a drag-and-drop organization’s digital capabilities, which
experience to build customizations. will guide and reinforce the value of
the ecosystem. While it’s important to
Whereas Salesforce AppExchange is a leave room for innovation, most of your
marketplace where independent software conceptual experiences will be the ones
vendors (ISVs) can provide prebuilt that deeply engage your constituents
solutions that complement the native (customers, partners, and employees)
Salesforce experience. and keep them coming back for more.
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Ecosystems and business models
need validation, too
The best ecosystems primarily focus on the value between the host and its
11
that will co-create that value. Do not
On another side of Salesforce’s rely on internal stakeholders alone for
ecosystem, ISVs build-and-resell turnkey validation since you may fall victim to
applications that rely on Salesforce APIs echo chamber thinking. Working with
that complement their out-of-the-box individuals in your intended ecosystem
capabilities with new experiences. This will make it easier to discover flaws in
involves a different business model that your planning, evolve your offering, and
includes AppExchange. In this model, eventually improve your bottom line.
value is co-created when ISVs earn
12
in strategic development. If not, proceed required financial investment and the
with caution. A strong-minded executive duration of the journey. They must
that isn’t on board with an API also reorganize the company, mandate
ecosystem can impede the progress of a behavioral changes, and fundamentally
digital strategy. shift the culture.
Executing your company’s new digital
To maximize success, ecosystem leaders strategy will be an extensive endeavor
must foster the energy and resources — it will make the metaphor of turning
that come with executive backing. The a battleship look simple. To survive in
executive sponsors need to know that the ever-changing digital landscape,
the plan has been holistically conceived organizations must reinvent
— with no stone left unturned to identify themselves by:
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13
Of course, an app like this is Consider the effort it takes across the
commonplace in today’s API-connected organization to achieve the airline
world. Still, it was not too long ago that app’s desired business outcomes. First,
a proprietary seatback playback system someone envisioned the mobile app as a
was the standard across many airlines. new business channel to keep customers
This system was prone to failure, frequent engaged while growing revenue. Then
updates, and a customer experience that someone spotted the opportunity to
gave customers little control. drive app adoption further by turning the
passenger’s smartphone into an in-flight
The airline’s app adds value to the digital entertainment portal. Finally, as gate
strategy because it incentivizes travelers personnel and flight attendants inform
who might not otherwise download the passengers of this new experience, this
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app and create an account — resulting ensures the passenger will install the app
in a longer-term digital engagement before take-off.
opportunity for the airline. The airline can
easily notify customers of revenue-driving
This type of organizational alignment and teams. The entire organization drove
culture around new digital experiences toward these outcomes beyond what
does not happen by mistake. It occurs was in the original digital strategy and
with enterprise-wide adoption of the created an excellent customer
In the blueprint’s second stage, there are several organizational and cultural changes that
every organization must consider:
Your digital strategy will require significant socialization to align the organizations to the
same objectives and business outcomes.
14
→ Focus on specific organizational values
→ Ask everyone to consider the value they can provide in service-oriented terms
When reinforcing the intention of the new strategy, consider positioning some of these
internal changes as mandates. When an organization goes through multiple changes,
it can be unsettling to employees previously operating under specific patterns. Open
communication will prepare the team for the changes coming to the organization.
The vision and mandate should be communicated through town halls, online FAQs,
newsletters, internal blogs, or email communications. The organization should also
provide training and orientation programs to help employees take ownership
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of these changes.
Values Matter: Trust, Security, and Privacy
Trust is your customers’ number one services. Up to 75% of credential abuse
15
“With any technology that becomes
commonplace, the impact of the
technology far outweighs the risks of using
them — and this is undoubtedly the case
with APIs.”
W H I T E PA P E R
16
Download now
For example, imagine the complexity and entire organization is held accountable for
specialized labor needed to maintain transforming its existing business capabilities
Siemens’ multiple mainframes into API-led services. This shift must ensure
and their integrations. that all new capabilities are developed and
aligned with the API-led approach.
Executives leading the charge need to
foster a cultural change — where the
17
A M A Z O N FAC E D T H IS C H A L L E N G E H E A D - O N :
18
→ Be designed with the intended customer in mind
→ Provide the customer with a great experience that inspires confidence in the brand
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Product Centric
When APIs are designed and resourced blueprint: from resourcing and staffing
with these characteristics, the stage is set to technology selections to how you’ll
for long-term service, higher customer engage your ecosystem (including
satisfaction, and ongoing engagement. evangelism, training, and support).
19
shifts. If the organization is dedicated to These roles do not have to be filled on a
product-centricity, it must appropriately per-service basis, and there are a variety
resource and staff its service offerings. of configurations that will work. For
Attempted shortcuts, particularly within example, one team might be responsible
specific domains like API security, could for multiple services and only need
be disastrous. one API developer to support them. In
comparison, a larger organization might
Some roles need to be brought on earlier need a central pool of API developers
in their API journey. The initial focus to preserve API development standards
should be adding a chief digital officer or across the organization.
equivalent, then API product managers,
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On the other hand, API product managers While the organization will hire for many
cannot be easily centralized into a pool. new roles, not every role will require a
The API product manager is the liaison for dedicated headcount. For example, the
ecosystem consumers and is responsible API developer may also have a hand in
20
Innovation for One and All
When business capabilities are buried to break. Another concern could be
within a monolithic architecture that resources, headcount, and priorities,
is accessible to a handful of people, or potentially there is red tape in the
these people become the gatekeeper of way. Many organizations are reluctant to
innovation. Frequently, the bottleneck is trust solutions developed by third-party
the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach vendors, which dramatically
and a fear that any attempts to change stifles innovation.
something complicated will cause it
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Democratization of innovation is a cultural issue, and the reasoning for this is three-fold:
3 . How will the organization foster the innovation process to make it an expected and
regular part of corporate culture? The aim is that innovation will drive people to
want to work for your organization or join your ecosystem. It isn’t enough to open
the system up for participation. It has to be a core part of the organization’s culture
to drive participation continually.
21
As organizations look to reinvent the digital economy, it’s not enough to strategize,
install some technology, and wait for the cash register to ring. Critical components like
product-centricity, security, and innovation must be embedded in the foundation of your
API strategy. Getting the culture right isn’t just important — it’s fundamental. Once your
culture is on the right track, it’s time to focus on the technology component.
W W W. S AL E S F O R C E. C O M
3
1 2 3 4
With your digital strategy in place, and your organization’s culture aligned with that
strategy, you’ll need the right technology to engage your ecosystem digitally.
It should be no surprise that APIs will be one of the critical enablers for your digital
strategy. As you look to publish your business capabilities for consumption across your
22
ecosystem, each of those capabilities will be facilitated by one or more APIs.
Similar to how Amazon has assembled a portfolio of APIs for Alexa, shopping, and
cloud computing, your digital platform should consist of APIs that are easily discovered
and consumed by the members of your ecosystem. These APIs result from existing
capabilities and API-related explorations of new functionality that might lead to new
business channels, business models, and products.
23
progress, they realize how integral the
system’s functionality must be The reality is that organizations are no
under the hood. more suited to building their own API
management solutions than they would
be building their database management
solutions or an in-house content
“Universal
Universal API management
API management enables management system. For this reason, it
developers
enables to developers
consume an organization’s is critical to constantly test your security
APIstothrough
consume a single
all catalog.
of an This practices and technologies for potential
management solution acts as the issues, even enlisting your ecosystem for
organization’s APIs through
ecosystem’s one-stop-shop single source help using bug bounties as an incentive.
a single catalog. This
of truth — regardless of the platform the Given the risks to your brand, API security
management solution acts
APIs are developed on. is not something to take lightly.
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W W W. S AL E S F O R C E. C O M
4
E ngaging Y ou r E cosystem
1 2 3 4
The API lifecycle’s online engagement Each team that developed through
phase focuses on API management the ecosystem journey will have its
solutions’ features like developer communication channels focusing on
registration, documentation, and internal ecosystem constituents. One
sample code. This stage of the API internal team may communicate through
strategy blueprint focuses on forms of Slack and email distribution lists, while
engagement and other activities that another might use Jira. Rather than
represent the totality of your ecosystem dictate a standardized communication
25
engagement efforts. method, focus on engaging where your
team members are most comfortable.
When it came time for Uber to support its APIs, the company could have built
an in-house support forum and hosted them on Uber.com. Instead, Uber met
its target audience where they were: on the forums at StackOverflow.com.
became self-sufficient with members who didn’t even work for Uber — as they
began to answer support questions from other members. Recognizing this as
a crucial part of its overall developer experience, Uber started gifting swag to
volunteer mentors, generating goodwill and more interest in the Uber API.
Uber didn’t attempt to force a community within its domain to grow web traffic or
a branded community. Meeting the developers where they are still allowed them to
connect with Uber API experts.
E ngaging Y ou r E cosystem
One Stop Shop: Create a Single Source of
Truth for All APIs
26
The composable business has gained traction with business and IT executives over
the last twenty years. At the same time, API adoption across every enterprise has also
increased exponentially.
Modern enterprises use up to 500 APIs to drive composability, speed, and agility.
Unfortunately, many of these enterprises adopted multiple fragmented solutions in their
underlying technology stacks. Siloed teams with diverse architectures and disparate
solutions for their different use cases led to API sprawl — the next big challenge for API-
led businesses. With API sprawl, it is more complicated than ever for enterprises to know
which APIs exist across the enterprise, let alone govern and secure them.
E ngaging Y ou r E cosystem
your platform’s adoption and usage. Yet, job is to work with community members
regardless of whether the goal is to drive before launching an API to gauge the
internal or external adoption, API and likelihood of adoption. If the members
platform evangelism needs to be a full- of your ecosystem don’t see the API
time role, and each API must be treated bringing ease and value toward meeting
as full-fledged products. their goals, they may reject the offering.
The API evangelist is the liaison to this
There are several ways to target members community and is essential to the success
across your ecosystem, including of your APIs — and ultimately, your
traditional marketing, hackathons, swag, business goals.
and bug bounties. An API and platform
evangelist’s job is to maximize the Another problem enterprises need
community of enthusiastic consumers help with is bringing together their API
about consuming your platform and APIs. community. The biggest hurdle in this
And in turn, they represent the APIs to process requires a single source of truth
27
anyone within their community. for the organization’s APIs. The benefit
is that having a single consolidated
Hiring an API evangelist early on will repository for APIs makes it easy for API
expedite go-to-market decisions and evangelists to promote your products and
jumpstart value co-creation across your build brand loyalty.
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API Community
Help Them Help You
A developer portal is the communication channel between your organization and your
API community. Whether a public website or an internal portal, it should be a one-stop
shop for developers to discover everything about your platform and APIs. In addition
E ngaging Y ou r E cosystem
to housing technical documentation, the developer portal has the resources needed to
enable developers to use the APIs. This can include but is not limited to:
Beyond these functions, the platform that is used to build a developer portal should
28
have ready-to-use templates to get up and running quickly. Finally, a comprehensive
developer portal makes a great first impression on developers and demonstrates how
you view, promote, and resource your APIs as some of your organization’s
most valuable offerings.
E ngaging Y ou r E cosystem
efforts. Training content and materials with developers to answer questions left
inform evangelists and prevent mistakes in the comments.
across the organization.
Think beyond text-based tutorials and
Example code is a fundamental embrace video tutorials, live and on-
training content that educates software demand webinars, or in-person training
developers on using their preferred at conferences. Some organizations add
programming language with their APIs. a certification to their training programs
In addition, this training code allows for developers who have proven to be
developers to familiarize themselves proficient with the platform. Often these
with your APIs to cut, paste, and certifications are shared on social media,
experiment with that sample code in their which is an excellent opportunity for
programming environments rather than evangelism created outside the scope of
building them from scratch. the dedicated evangelist.
29
Consider implementing step-by-step
tutorials to guide developers through There is a range of options for your
example business problems with training offerings, some of which are
programming code that uses your APIs. better suited to specific members of your
These tutorials can be published through ecosystem. Focus on what makes the
a content management system like most sense with your initiatives and for
WordPress leading to programming code the ecosystem’s members.
new experiences with the business Hackathon participants are often internal
capabilities offered by your platform members of the platform team and
via APIs. In addition, hackathons are developers from across an organization.
sometimes contests where the concept They will break away from their usual
tasks for a day of highly-collaborative For platform providers, hackathons are an
interaction — hopefully resulting in key opportunity to discover where developers
takeaways for both groups. For example, might struggle with specific APIs. For
the platform team may get feedback example, you may find that the API’s
about the design of an API, while new resources could be more consistent or
E ngaging Y ou r E cosystem
possibilities might inspire developers. that developers must spend significant
time with the documentation or in trial-
Hackathons also democratize innovation. and-error mode.
The entries surface previously
unimagined ideas that could turn For hackathons to be effective, they must
into business initiatives. be something other than
one-time events. They must be scheduled
regularly and be an everyday part of your
organization’s culture.
B LO G
30
Is this thing on? Importance of a Feedback Loop
In the early days of API development, as a breaking change.
some API providers would launch one Regarding the co-creation of value, the
version of an API. Then without any better approach is to overlap versions
adequate warning, they’d either change so that developers can test the new
its programming structure or replace it functionality in their apps while also
with a new, improved one. providing feedback on the latest versions
(i.e., bug reports). This feedback can
Many API providers learned the hard happen on online forums, comments
way that making sudden changes to on blogs and docs, Slack and email, or
their APIs was bad for business. Once similar communication tools. When you
W W W. S AL E S F O R C E. C O M
E ngaging Y ou r E cosystem
members. This co-creation of value occurs energy it would cost the company to
in several ways, one of the most popular uncover such an error. Rewards like this
being bug bounties, where individuals establish good faith with your community
earn rewards for identifying flaws within and potential customers.
a system. Yet surprisingly, many API
providers do not do this. The community can also get involved
by developing open-source SDKs for
Digitally-native industry leaders and languages your team is unfamiliar with.
companies committed to creating an For example, the GitHub public code
ecosystem with collaborative feedback repository has thousands of SDKs from
compensate with cash or recognition. independent developers (compared to
Take Google, for example — the company the API providers themselves). An API
paid a developer who discovered a provider might choose not to build SDKs
catastrophic API security vulnerability for less popular languages, like Clojure
31
within a YouTube API, making it possible or Haskell, and incentivize its developer
for hackers to delete any YouTube video. community to make them instead.
Collaborative Community
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Invest in yourself
Creating a new API ecosystem will involve identify domain experts you hope to
restructuring, increased headcount, and recruit while you also create the budgets.
E ngaging Y ou r E cosystem
more working hours — which means
business leaders must understand that However, as you move into tech
it’s impossible to estimate the total cost enablement, you must budget for
upfront. On the flip side, it is equally different expenses. These choices,
absurd to head in to develop an API costs, and savings will be unique to your
ecosystem with a blank check. There organization’s goals and intention for
needs to be ongoing conversations and the ecosystems. So for example, the
planning across the four stages of this engagement expenses involved in a
blueprint regarding financial expectations, public API economy differ from a private
expenditures, and ROI. offering that stays within the corporate
Use this blueprint to shape the financial firewalls or partners.
conversation into compartmentalized
discussions, where the cost of each Recording and mapping expenses into a
step will be tracked to its goals and dashboard that offers a global view of the
outcomes. For example, while you build ongoing budget, expenses, savings, and
32
organizational culture, the team can ROI for the journey.
It falls on the organization leaders to build on each other. Your digital strategy
determine which KPIs will measure the will evolve in response to successes
API ecosystem’s success. and failures, shifting market conditions,
competition, and customer requirements. Such goals should involve
As your digital strategy develops, so will well-understood measurements (i.e.,
the measures of digital strategy success. number of developer registrations, API
requests, and revenue) and identify and
The rest of the development is limited if automate the connections between
E ngaging Y ou r E cosystem
the organization doesn’t enable rigorous business and technological metrics.
KPI monitoring at the beginning of the While it’s not listed as a discreet action
journey. Lax KPI monitoring also conveys item in the technology stage of this
to the organization that accountability is blueprint, forging these connections is
not part of the process. If an organization an integral part of the measurement and
is diligent at setting and communicating testing phase of the API lifecycle. This
goals, the entire organization will opportunity is your chance to tie technical
culturally become a part of the process. and business metrics together and may
reveal new opportunities or the need to
recalibrate a business model.
EXAMPLE SCENARIO
33
Let’s say a fictitious airline waits until passengers have boarded their flights
before encouraging them to download a mobile application. At the same
time, everyone is seated at the gate with free WiFi. As a result, that airline’s
API metrics (available from the API management platform) might reflect low
usage, which correlates to the number of installations of that mobile app.
Once gate personnel suggests downloading the app while passengers wait at
the gate, the airline’s metrics improve, including in-flight food and premium
entertainment purchases (whose revenue is stored in the accounting system).
Aggregating these metrics from their respective sources into a single view
W W W. S AL E S F O R C E. C O M
2
API your API strategy but are by no means exhaustive. The
Strategy
customer experience is the keystone to your ecosystem
strategy and should be kept in mind as your organization
4
Concl u sion
Regardless of where your organization is within the API strategy journey, universal
API management through Anypoint Platform can help. This solution increases agility,
improves governance, and delivers innovations quickly.
34
W W W. S AL E S F O R C E. C O M
L ea r n How Mu le S of t Can E le vate Y ou r AP I S tr ategy
Learn How MuleSoft Can Elevate
Your API Strategy
API
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35
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