The role of the business developer has traditionally been to initiate partnerships and follow through by ensuring some sort of integration is implemented. As enterprises become more software-driven, integration itself increasingly comes through APIs. This may mean that the implementation of API-driven “partner portals” is replacing traditional business development practices. A recent article from Wired claimed that 70% of all jobs will be ...
Are APIs Making the Biz Dev Role Obsolete?
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Making Government Data “Easy to Find, Accessible & Usable”
On May 9, 2013 the White House released an executive order with the title Making Open & Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information. My favorite line in the entire document is:
“Government information shall be managed as an asset throughout its life cycle to promote interoperability and openness, and, wherever possible and legally permissible, to ensure that data are released to the public in ways that make the data easy to find, accessible, and usable” (emphasis mine).
...
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How to Make Your Developers Mobile Innovators (Psst… It’s in the API Presentation Layer!)
APIs have multiple purposes inside an enterprise. Most of the early excitement around API stemmed from the potential for APIs to foster communities of “long-tail” developers. With data becoming the new mobile currency, opening up data to legions of developers held out the promise of multiplying revenue and reach for start-ups and enterprises alike.
While several start-ups have demonstrated the potential of tapping the long-tail developer community (look at examples like Twillio, ...
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Intel Buys Mashery! Is it Because the Cloud Will Have an API Inside?
For close to five years, Intel has had a stake in the API space. All the while, I've often asked myself why. Intel originally acquired an API Gateway from a prior Intel Capital investment that never fully blossomed. And despite the oddness of having a tiny enterprise software franchise lost inside a semiconductor behemoth, Intel persisted in its experiment, even in the face of questionable market success and lukewarm analyst reaction. So, why double down on APIs now?
With the steady decline of the ...
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Webinar Tomorrow: How to Choose the Right API Management Solution
On Wednesday morning, Layer 7 will be hosting a webinar on How to Choose the Right API Management Solution. There are many solutions that cover one or two aspects of API Management – just a portal or just a Gateway or just access control. However, a truly comprehensive API Management platform needs to provide a broad range of functionality in the management of four distinct areas: identity, developers, interfaces and operations. We’ll delve into each of these areas and discu ...
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Want ROI from Your APIs? Then Lower the Cost of Building Them
I often hear the term “ROI” used in reference to an API program. Often, it is the discussed in the context of getting either direct revenue from an API or growing reach from an API, which in some places, translates into a lower cost of customer acquisition. While both direct revenue and reach are admirable goals, ROI from an API program is not limited to the number and quality of external developers.
For instance, most organizations will deri ...
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Apigee Announced an API Exchange Friday – Somewhere a UN Agency Shed a Tear
A decade ago, during the first wave of Internet innovation, countless business plans began with the breathless promise of becoming the UN of this or that information exchange. ECommerce and communications would be transformed through the mediation of a neutral “man in the middle”. Here's what happened: the communitarian exchanges failed; businesses that went ...
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Who Owns Your Developers?
For API publishers, acquiring developers is a pretty fundamental matter. “More developers, more money and reach” goes the thinking. But are all developers of equal value? And is borrowing a developer as good as true developer ownership?
My rather unsurprising answer to both questions is: “No”. Clearly, some developers will be more valuable than others and borrowing will neve ...
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If They Have to Ask, You Didn’t Afford It
My guess is you are familiar with the phrase “If you have to ask, you can't afford it”. Well, that's not what I mean here. Let me show you what I’m actually getting at...
If They Have to Ask...
Try this:
Create a new Web API
Get it up and running on some server or other
Hand the single URL to a client dev and say: “There ya go!”
Is the API self-descriptive? Does it contain enough information in the re ...
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API Business ROI
Numerous measurements exist for APIs. On the technical level, these metrics are fairly well understood. However, on the business level, there is a great deal of confusion over how the effectiveness of an API program can be accurately measured.
Layer 7’s March 14 webinar, ROI for APIs – which will feature input from TechCrunch and AT&T – should help to clear up some of this confusion. In particular, the webinar will focus on how hackthons can be used to gather valuable data fo ...
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