This document discusses the evolution of APIs and supply chains for APIs. It notes that APIs have evolved from isolated integrations to managed API products. Supply chains for APIs are also emerging in industries like finance and telecommunications. The document advocates for applying lessons from physical supply chain management to API product management. It also discusses trends like API federation enabling multi-party business models, the shift to cloud-native architectures, and the rise of polyglot technologies in APIs.

1. Hello!
Asanka Abeysinghe
Chief Technology Evangelist (former Deputy CTO)
asankaa AT wso2.com

2. Quantum Duality of “API as a business”
and “API as a Technology”
September 2021

3. Quantum Duality of “API as a business” and “API as a technology”
3
Overview
Federation and Business Models Move to the cloud
Polyglot and heterogeneous Modernizing development

4. 4
Supply chain
A supply chain is a network between a
company and its suppliers to produce
and distribute a specific product or
service to the final buyer. This network
includes different activities, people,
entities, information, and resources.
The supply chain also represents the
steps it takes to get the product or
service from its original state to the
customer.
Source: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/supplychain.asp Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/usdagov/

5. Consumption
Sales
Distribution
5
Evolution of Supply Chain
Source: https://thenewstack.io/a-successful-api-strategy-needs-a-digital-supply-chain-and-a-thriving-ecosystem/
Manufacturing
Sourcing
Experience
(by Customers)
Registration
(by Customers)
Deployment
(of Digital Solutions)
Development
(of Digital Solutions)
Discovery
(of Data & Services)
Industry Supply Chain
Digital Supply Chain

6. 6
New product experience

7. 7
API-centric Architecture
https://github.com/wso2/reference-architecture
Centralized Decentralized

8. 8
Evolution of APIs
Pure Technical Semi Technical Managed APIs API Products
Isolated
Early
Integration
Message
Oriented
SOA Pre MSA/IoT MSA
● EDI
● File sharing
● Sockets
● Message
queues
● Data to data
● Monolithic Apps ● OLE/OLE+
● COM/COM+
● CORBA
● RMI/EJB
● WebDev
● ESB
● SOAP
● BPEL
● BAM
● REST
● HTTP/s
● AMQP
● MQTT
● Servicemesh
● gRPC
● GraphQL
● Websockets/
hooks
● AsyncAPI

9. New York
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SEPTEMBER
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APRIL
Helsinki & North
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OCTOBER
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10. APIs
Products of the 21st
Century
9

11. Products of the 21st Century
Directly Monetized Indirectly Monetized Combined physical/digital
10
Backbone for digital transformation and API Products

12. 11
Products exist in
and
rely on ecosystems
Image: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/541417186425569576/ (Pandora)

13. 12
Marketplace
Photo by Gabriella Clare Marino on Unsplash

14. Federation enables multi-party business models
https://wso2.com/library/webinars/federated-apis-across-ecosystems/
13
#1
e.g. Scania
Internal federated marketplace #2
e.g. BNY Mellon
Partner marketplace #3
e.g. Smart Dubai
Closed group marketplace
#4
e.g. ideabiz
Shared revenue marketplace #5
e.g. Apigate
Aggregator marketplace

15. 14
Emerging supply chains for APIs in finance
Banks
Banks
Banks Payment Gateways Mobile Wallets New Cards
Third Party Providers Fintechs

16. 15
Emerging Supply Chains for APIs in Telco
Cell Provider
Cell Provider
Cell Provider

17. 16
Cell Provider
Cell Provider
Cell Provider
Cell Provider
Cell Provider

18. What can we learn from the physical ISC?
Product Lifecycle Management API Product Management
ERP & Financials API Insights and Monetization
Supply Chain Management API Integration & Enablement
Logistics API DevOps and Management
17

19. 18
The shift to Cloud Native
Traditional Cloud Native
Virtual Machines and vSphere Containers and Kubernetes
Centralised CoE based Integration API-led decentralised integration
APIs for Partners APIs everywhere
API Gateway Edge Gateway and Microgateway
Synchronous Request-Reply Event-Driven Async
Heavyweight all-in-one systems Lightweight, decoupled, deploy anywhere
Proprietary licenses Open source by default
Pay upfront Pay as you go

20. 19
API Federation: Enabling multi-party business models
● Hosts a collection of APIs from different providers on a single
federated marketplace.
● Unified analytics, policy enforcement, subscriptions, billing, etc.
● Open source specification for publication to a marketplace:
https://github.com/api-federation/
Publisher Developer Portal Analytics Identity
AWS Gateway
Azure Gateway
NGINX
WSO2 Gateway

21. Quantum Duality of “API as a business” and “API as a technology”
20
Summary
Federation and Business Models
● Heterogeneous API landscape -
- Federation & multi-party
● Governance of API products across
- multi-vendors
● New Monetization models
● API Product Management focus
Move to the cloud
● Multi-Cloud & Hybrid deployment
● Kubernetes runtimes
● Automation
● Massive scale of API infrastructures
● Cloud business models
Polyglot and heterogeneous
● Polyglot microservices and macro-services
● More than OAS:
- GraphQL, AsyncAPI, gRPC,
- Kafka, NATS, etc
● API aggregation and integration
Modernizing development
● Microgateways & Service Mesh
co-deployed with workloads
● CI/CD enablement
● Unified API development
● Serverless
● Kubernetes development
environments

22. 21
Contribution
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2020/12/23/the-importance-of-building-an-integrated-supply-chain-for-apis/
https://wso2.com/api-manager/
https://wso2.com/choreo/

23. Let’s connect
22
https://blog.architect2architect.com
https://wso2.com/strategic-consulting/
asankaa AT WSO2.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/asankaabeysinghe/
@asankama
Image: https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/crn-exclusive-new-google-cloud-partner-advantage-program-launches-today

24. New York
JULY
Australia
SEPTEMBER
Singapore
APRIL
Helsinki & North
MARCH
Paris
DECEMBER
London
OCTOBER
Jakarta
FEBRUARY
Hong Kong
AUGUST
JUNE
India
MAY
Check out our API Conferences here
Want to talk at one of our
conferences?
Apply to speak here
50+ events since 2012, 14 countries, 2,000+ speakers, 50,000+ attendees,
300k+ online community