APIs are a foundational technology that enables companies to participate in the digital economy. APIs have the potential for value creation such as the establishment of new channels for products and services and the enablement of entirely new digital businesses models. The ecosystem created by connected enterprises, customers and suppliers via APIs has an economic effect – The API Economy. In this post we will look at the steps to tap into the API Economy and Monetize Your APIs.

APIs provide programmable access to systems and data that have strategic and economic value. For example, the APIs provided by Amazon and eBay are the primary means for paying customers to access their platforms. Like these born-on-the-web companies many traditional companies are looking to provide systems as platforms and offer information and services via APIs. These platforms require a modern architecture as well as a business strategy to monetize APIs. Also, new software development approaches are often needed to treat software as products and manage a rapid product release cycle.

The five steps to monetize your APIs we will examine includes:
1. Establish your business case and roadmap
2. Ensure you have the right funding and organizational model
3. Treat APIs as a products with an Agile API product lifecycle and governance
4. Ensure you have the right technology platform to build and manage your APIs
5. Measure and monitor API KPIs such as run-time performance, financials and developer feedback

The API Product Business Case
An API is not a product if it’s not designed and managed like one. APIs should be treated as products from the beginning including how they are funded and supported by the organization. An API business case should be created to ensure proper business alignment, funding and organizational support.

The API monetization business case and strategy should address the following key questions:
• What are potential API and data driven value added services and revenue opportunities?
• What is the required level of investment and what are the supporting business cases?
• What’s the process to develop and support new data and digital services revenue streams?
• What commitments does the organization need to make?

When developing your API monetization strategy, consider the following topics:
• Digital products and data monetization offerings including: potential customers, sales channels, and service offerings
• Customer needs assessment
• Competitive assessment
• Funding and staffing models
• Business case(s) for APIs and data as a service
• Implementation roadmap
• Pricing model for API usage/data consumption
• Marketing communications plan

API Organization and Funding
Whether your API is a product or a project starts with how your API is funded. Are you treating the API as a funded product or as an approved IT project? Building products within traditional IT projects will be challenged from the start.

A typical IT project is funded based on an allocation of an annual IT budget and approved based on projected benefits. Then project scope is tracked (hopefully) and benefits are assumed but often not validated. It is rare to see an IT project’s financial returns calculated with rigor post implementation. So if your API is a project, it is viewed by the business in the context of a budget in the IT cost center.

A product however is positioned as an investment, not a budget carve out of a cost center. A product might come from an R&D budget or might be funded as a business startup. Additional funding past a product launch is funded as a product enhancement. Benefits must be validated for continued product development – for example with sales for market-facing products and with usage for internal products.

Agile API Product Lifecycle and Governance
APIs should be developed using techniques such as Scrum with product ownership, Agile portfolio management and API product ownership to manage your APIs as products. For example, funding could be based on the desired portfolio of API products and the set of Sprints needed to create the products as minimum viable products (MVP). Then, enhancement Sprints could be funded based on product revenue and anticipated additional revenue from enhancements. The API development team would not be staffed as a transitional IT project but as a more formal product team based on the life of the product.

An API product lifecycle has many of the following attributes:
• Published to and consumed from an API developer portal / data marketplace
• API product ownership – roadmap, MVPs, product offerings, pricing models
• API lifecycle management – API-first design, API standards, metadata capture, test driven development, CI/CD, version control, run-time KPIs and SLAs
• Customer feedback and enhancement loop
• Product marketing and market research

API Product Platform
APIs are the digital conduit to underlying information and services and presents the programmable interface to the consumer. However, there is most often a great deal of complexity underlying the API. APIs can be exposed via green-field microservices on the latest Platform-as-a-Service or via integrations to legacy monolithic applications. The underling architecture components might include e-commerce, digital assets/rights management, security, integration, data management and many enterprise information systems. APIs are, from an availability and performance perspective, the sum of its parts and must have a solid component architecture.

Consider the following steps to get your API platform architecture ready for commercialization:

• Review API requirements and candidate component architecture
• Diagram the current-state platform architecture
• Assess architecture gaps based on requirements/capabilities, industry analysis and trends
• Diagram future state architecture
• Build vs. buy decisions and software selection as needed
• Legacy modernization – monolith to microservices migration, Agile development, DevOps

API management software is a critical component to API monetization architecture. API management software provides the following features:
• Developer portal / marketplace
• Lifecycle management
• Throttling and security
• Analytics, KPIs, and developer feedback
• Monetization features – metering, billing models, payments and reports

Run-time Management and KPIs
The API management software provides many of the metrics you will need to manage your APIs as products. API management has API portal metrics, such as API keys issued, active developers; and run-time metrics such as API call counts and response times; as well as developer feedback such as forums and API rankings.

To create an environment of continuous improvement, establish as set of KPIs for APIs to monitor and track within the categories of operations, development, portal metrics and financial. It is best to establish KPIs early and instrument your APIs and API platform to gather the telemetry data needed to report the KPIs.

It is also critical to monitor the underlying components, like microservices and legacy integrations, using application performance monitoring tools as these distributed environments are typically complex.

API Quick Start
Perficient has an API Quick Start offering that addresses the topics introduced here should you need any help. We bring a lot of intellectual property and experience to the problems associated with building world-class API products.

We’ve done many of API and microservices projects over the years, but I thought it would be nice to share what we presented at the recent CA World conference, which took place at the end of 2017. We shared the stage with TCF Bank, a client of ours.

According to the company’s website, TCF Bank is a wholly owned banking subsidiary of TCF Financial Corp., a bank holding company headquartered in Minnesota. It has $23 billion in assets and 321 branches providing retail and commercial banking services in  Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, Colorado, Wisconsin, Arizona, and South Dakota. Through its subsidiaries, TCF conducts commercial leasing and equipment finance business nationwide and commercial inventory finance business in the United States and Canada.

As TCF Bank’s VP Enterprise Integration COE Jon Genda put it, the bank’s systems were “long in the tooth.” To increase efficiency, drive innovation, and offer customers a banking experience they deserve, the company needed to “invigorate” its IT infrastructure.

To do this, TCF Bank formed a large initiative that focused on digital banking. The initiative required a software-as-a-service solution that would provide an online banking platform and a mobile application. It also needed to modernize all supporting IT platforms, which would include integrations and the development of an operational data store and APIs.

The program, which Perficient partnered with TCF Bank to develop and execute, resulted in very positive outcomes in a relatively short span of time. Some of the program’s highlights include:

• Met customer expectations for a modern, scalable digital platform
• Modernized IT platforms and processes
• Microservices reference architecture and standards
• Improved customer and operational insights by unlocking mainframe data
• Heightened customer experience with digital banking features

To watch the complete presentation, click here or play the video below.

If you’re a financial institution that is interested in leveraging microservices and APIs to improve your efficiency, productivity, and customer experience, please reach out. We’d love to connect and discuss how we can put our knowledge to work for you.

Last month during CA World, we were honored to present alongside TCF Bank on how they’ve transformed their systems to support banking anywhere. Jon Genda, Assistant Vice President of Enterprise Integration at TCF, presented with Eric Roch, Perficient’s Principal of IT Modernization to outline their digital transformation strategy using APIs and microservices. During the session, Jon and Eric outline the main challenges TCF encountered in implementing this approach along with the ways they overcame each obstacle to achieve outstanding results for TCF’s customers.

Watch the full session below!

It was an amazing four days at CA World, with attendees immersed in the full suite of CA solutions and their associated IT Trends. With many organizations now using the Modern Software Factory (which includes agile, automation, insights, and security) for their day-to-day innovation needs, CA Technologies CTO Otto Berkes stepped to the stage to share insights, learnings, and lessons for the journey ahead.

“Let’s talk about technology in the enterprise. I’m going to make a similar prediction. I believe that by 2030, what we’ve come to know as IT today will be gone or will be virtually unrecognizable.” –@OttoBerkes #CAWORLD pic.twitter.com/IJUPXxDSdr

— CA Technologies (@CAinc) November 16, 2017

Chief among some of the success stories were movie chain AMC and media giant 21st Century Fox, which have leveraged CA’s Modern Software Factory to achieve digital transformation. In AMC’s case, the adoption of customer insights enabled the theater chain to strategically offer concessions depending on the movie being shown for greater sales. For 21st Century Fox, CA’s solutions empowered a closer tie to technology for many of its leading television shows on the Fox News Channel.

Fox SVP of Digital Channels sharing how they leveraged several products in CA portfolio to help with their transformation. #CAWorld pic.twitter.com/YpkHYL1YKx

— Obaidur Rashid (@orashid) November 16, 2017

.@asayed is now talking about @AMCTheatres and their collection of customer data. #caworld

— Perficient Integrate (@PRFT_Integrate) November 16, 2017

In all, the conclusion drawn by Berkes on stage was simple: Those who employ the principles of the Modern Software Factory 70% higher profits and 50% higher revenue. We consider this to be definitive in showing the power of DevOps and the adoption of digital transformation.

However, the conversation didn’t end there. Despite advances in modern IT, there was also ample concern about the rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning. In particular, the biggest worry was the insertion of historical bias into artificial intelligence and how this would affect economic and social inequality.

The biggest stumbling block to #AI #ML will be to account for historical bias #caworld @ottoberkes

— Perficient Integrate (@PRFT_Integrate) November 16, 2017

Additionally, concern was also shared in the realm of IT security. With recent breaches of credit card information and worries of continued governmental interference, Berkes expressed that his biggest worry in 2030 that nothing will have changed.

In 2030, the biggest #security nightmare is that nothing will have changed. #caworld w/ @ottoberkes

— Perficient Integrate (@PRFT_Integrate) November 16, 2017

Finally, worry was again shared around the skills gap, which continues to challenge technology companies. Additionally, much was also mentioned around the need for diversity.

“Diverse people need to be in that room.” @CAinc Distinguished Engineer Howard Abrams on #ThinkFast panel at #CAWorld #NoBarriers pic.twitter.com/u3jZ3Gita9

— Adam Elster (@AdamElster) November 16, 2017

Were you at the 2nd day keynote for CA World? Let us know what you thought of the talk in the comments below.

Our team joined Britannia Development at CA Technologies’ CA World 2017 conference to share insights into how the nationwide real estate development company will build connected homes that leverage IoT and automation for real-time customer access to data.

Britannia Development, which built its business on real estate development and rehabilitation, plans to introduce Internet of Things (IoT) and automation capabilities powered by tools that include CA API management.

Dan Ross, general manager at Britannia Development, and Arvin Karibasic, senior consultant at Perficient, led the CA World session.

How it Began

Dan started his career as property insurance adjuster and got into repairing houses. Most of the homes needed repairs because they were vacant and had damage due to conditions brought on by being abandoned. Dan realized that smart home components and devices could not only be used for convenience but also to help mitigate loses on managed property that may be vulnerable to damage.

Arvin, who works with CA API Gateway and API management, discussed how Complete Property Automation (CPA) started with CA products. The first step with CA Technologies’ products was to use the API Gateway as a standard way to collect data from smart devices, creating connected homes. The second step was to present that data to backend systems to process.

Questions that arose during discussions were: How can we connect these devices, homes, and CPA’s networks? How do we provide enterprise level security? How can we secure our backend applications, and IoT infrastructure?

Dan’s IoT Vision

Dan became more informed at CA World 2016, and with guidance from Perficient, he saw a solution to address the challenges needed to complete his vision.

Today, the Wink hub connects the houses, 100-plus IoT devices, Britannia (or CPA) in each home. They just need to connect to the hub of each home to the Gateway. The CPA portal addressed the needs in a market, and control all hubs.

How the Vision Grew

Although it began as security and risk mitigation, Dan’s vision soon changed as he experienced a hurricane in Florida. He saw how connected homes could better react on how to respond to 50,000+ homes damaged by a hurricane. This would bring stability for enterprise clients and institutional clients.

Hence, the Complete Property Automation portal was created. It evolved from a reactionary to an enterprise solution as to where to direct relief and repair efforts. The project evolved from the Gateway and data.

Key Components

Things were moving so quickly that it became obvious that they needed to market to larger enterprises.

• Understanding how to connect homes, with the enterprise vision became clear with discussion of utilizing the API Gateway
• Integrating various backend applications to accomplish the vision was completed with the API Gateway, which provided enterprise level security for the network
• The setup needed to be agile since development was moving so fast, and requirements were rapidly changing.
• Changing project requirements added to functionality of the gateway, and change in required uses for IoT. Evolving project led to further utilization of the gateway as a key piece.

Future Plans

• Take 50 to 100 houses and start pushing the Gateway to ensure the model is performant. Grow the architecture to include new features and build an enterprise-grade model.
• Utilizing Live API Creator allowed for scalability, and increased time to market by instantly connecting to DB’s that acted as IoT data stores.
• Integrating finance with the IoT vision inside of the CPA Portal is key to introduce further expansion into the market with customers

CA World kicked off for partners today with a half-day summit outlining the current state of CA Technologies’ partner program and a future look at the roadmap. CA executives across the board presented to the crowded room of Focus partners – those specially appointed by CA for their sales and delivery capabilities.

As part of the summit, CA also announces Partner Award winners, acknowledging partners that exceeded revenue, enablement, and business goals alongside exceptional service to customers. We’re honored to announce that Perficient won the Disruptor of the Year Award which recognizes the partner that has demonstrated best-in-breed innovation in sales, marketing, and technology focus.

Perficient partners with CA Technologies to drive digital transformation solutions for our customers. This partnership started last year focusing solely on API management, but in recent months has expanded to include CA’s DevOps products including service virtualization and test automation. We were recognized for our innovative client solutions over the last year leveraging CA API management and DevOps tools. One example comes from our work with a major energy and utility company that was looking to give more IoT functionality to its field agents. With CA tools, our team built a system of new generation smart devices with multichannel geomapping, geofencing, and custom mapping apps. The roll out of these devices improved field agents’ service and delivery time by almost 80%.

“We’re excited about the award as it demonstrates the commitment to and success of our partnership with CA Technologies” said Hari Madamalla, VP of Field Operations at Perficient. “In the first year since starting our partnership, we have become CA’s go-to partner for API management due to our sales and delivery capabilities and have now expanded to better provide transformative solutions to our customers.”

From left: James DeLuca (Alliance Manager), Annel Adzem (Director, Emerging Solutions), and Hari Madamalla (Vice President, Field Operations) accepting the award from Tony Jennings (center, Vice President of North America Partner Sales)

“We’re thrilled by the progress and momentum of our partnership,” added Annel Adzem, Director of Perficient’s Emerging Platform Solutions group. “We’re continually looking for better ways to help our clients modernize and accelerate, and CA is a fantastic partner in that.”

Perficient is also exhibiting and speaking at CA World this week. If you’re attending, join our sessions with TCF Bank and Britannia Development on Wednesday and stop by our booth (#1001 in the DevOps, APIs, and Microservices area) to hear more about our digital transformation work with customers. If you can’t attend, follow the blog and on Twitter for updates from the conference.

The moment has arrived – CA World has started!

Over the next few days, we’ll be at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas Resort & Casino speaking with thousands of IT professionals at CA’s premier user conference. If you’re attending, we’d love to speak with you at booth #1001 about our DevOps, Cloud, Service Virtualization, and digital transformation expertise.

In addition to our panels and giveaway, there are also other reasons to attend the conference. We’ll be live tweeting both keynote speeches on November 15 and 16, which include:

• A talk with mountaineer Jimmy Chin and Mike Gregoire. Chin will share his adventures scaling some of the world’s highest peaks and how IT professionals can apply that in their own quests to master today’s most pivotal moments in technology. Gregoire will discuss how IT professionals can approach such pivotal moments for growth.
• Conversations with CA executives Otto Berkes and Ayman Sayed. As leaders of CA Technologies, Sayed and Berkes are at the forefront of technology innovation and will share their technology predictions for the future and discuss the progress of CA’s Modern Software Factory.

You can sign up to watch these talks with us here while also following us over on Twitter.

Finally, if you have a burning question or want to figure out where to go next in your digital transformation initiatives, our experts are here to talk. We have numerous case studies to share and prepare you for the road ahead. Set up a meeting with us today and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

We all know that organizations are becoming more focused on the ability to more quickly release applications. Service virtualization is one way to address bottlenecks in the development lifecycle and enable scalability through virtualized testing capabilities.

Today, we presented on a webinar with CA, Automate your APIs for Real Testing Acceleration. Ronda Kiser-Oakes, Perficient’s DevOps Director, Karl Miller, Principal Consultant at CA, and I all discussed how to achieve higher quality releases with virtual services and conducted a live demo of CA’s service virtualization tool.

In case you missed it, here is what we covered:

• Perficient partners with customers to shift left through our DevOps thought leadership and strategy.
• Create a virtual service from a car lookup web site from Service Virtualization’s recorder function.
• Automatically create a performance test while creating the virtualized service.
• Execute a performance test with added latency to show the ability to add mainframe eques latency time.
• Create a virtual service manually by designing an instantiation service design contract.
• List of large protocol coverage.
• The success story for why and how Service Virtualization (CA DevTest) allows customers to shift left and test sooner.
• Customer successes and real life use cases.

Listen to the recording, and share your questions below.

Perficient is proud to be sponsoring CA World ’17, November 13-17, 2017 at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas. As the premier CA user conference, this year’s event will include thousands of IT professionals looking to understand evolving digital transformation initiatives. If you’re attending the conference this year, we’d love to connect with you.

Ways to connect with us at CA World ’17:

ENTER TO WIN A SOUTHWEST GIFT CARD

Visit us at booth #1001 for a chance to win a $300 Southwest Airlines gift card. Additionally, booth attendees can also engage in hands-on demonstrations that showcase the transformative qualities of API management in health care and financial services.

JOIN OUR PANEL SESSIONS

We’ll be speaking on two panels for the conference:

• CA API Management Enables TCF Bank’s Digital Transformation (November 15, 11:30 am-Noon, DevOps: APIs and Microservices Theater 1): Join Jon Genda, Assistant Vice President of Enterprise Integration at TCF Bank, and Perficient strategic advisor Eric Roch to discuss how TCF Bank chose CA’s API Management platform and microservices to modernize its legacy system. Additionally, hear how such best practices can be applied within your own organization.
• Perficient and Britannia Development: Complete Property Automation with CA API Management (November 15, 12:45-1:30 pm, DevOps: APIs and Microservices Tech Talk 1): Join Dan Ross, General Manager at real estate firm Britannia Development and Perficient Senior Consultant, Arvin Karibasic, as they discuss how to build homes connected through IoT and automation by tools including CA’s API Management platform.

CONSULT OUR EXPERTS

Have a burning digital transformation question? Schedule a consultation with one of our experts to discuss how CA API, DevOps, Service Virtualization, IoT, and Microservices solutions can support your organization’s upcoming initiatives. Our team is here to help with best practices, success stories, and lessons learned from our work with other clients and our partnership with CA to help prepare you for the road ahead.

Set up a meeting with us today for a conversation.

Register Today! 

Application construction and delivery best practices are key to having a successful go-to market strategy, especially when built with APIs, microservices, and other integration solutions. If you’re serious about changing the way you change your processes, CA and Perficient can show you how you can automate your APIs and create real ROI with CA Service Virtualization.

Organizations embarking on a digital transformation are pressured to deliver innovative applications, and CA Service Virtualization eliminates common development and testing constraints to accelerate your SDLC while achieving up to 50% higher quality application releases. Only CA is positioned as a large-scale global IT software player with the nimbleness your organization requires in the Application Economy.

If you’re looking to deliver bug free code that can scale, join us on a groundbreaking webinar November 2 at 2 p.m. EST by registering here. We’ll also be live-tweeting the event, so be sure to follow and engage us at @PRFT_Integrate. We’ll see you there!

Perficient is proud to be exhibiting at CA World ’17, November 13-17, 2017 at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas. Attended by many manager-level or higher individuals, this year’s conference theme is focused on removing the barriers between ideas and innovation through CA’s suite of DevOps, API management, service virtualization, IoT, and microservices solutions.

The conference itself has something for everyone, with over 400 planned sessions as well as inspirational keynotes from mountaineer, skier and filmmaker Jimmy Chin and CA executives. Developers will also have access to pre-conference education and certifications where they can create their blueprint for professional success.

Our team will also be on site at booth #1001 to help you strategize across all of your digital transformation initiatives and share our successful industry-specific demos of API and microservices implementations. We hope you’ll join us!

Some of the highlights at this year’s conference:

• Keynote speakers: Keynotes by mountaineer, skier, and filmmaker Jimmy Chin, CA CEO Mike Gregoire, CA CTO Otto Berkes, and CA CPO Ayman Sayed.
• Notable speakers from veritable organizations including Forrester, NBC Universal, DevOps.com, eBay, and Verizon.
• Themed Networking experiences representing global cities where attendees can network with their peers.
• Event Night Headliners: Third Eye Blind and Counting Crows

Set Up a Meeting 

If you’re going to be at CA World, set up a meeting with us to speak to one of our experts today. We look forward to meeting you there!

Last Monday, our own Eric Roch spoke at API World where his presentation on microservices was live streamed online by CA Technologies. We captured his talk on Twitter, and you can see it below on Storify:

Learn More

If you’re looking to create more efficient IT operations, look no further than our microservices expertise. Email one of our specialists at sales@perficient.com and download our guide for more information.