التكنولوجيا وأخبارها بوابة الإمارات لتكنولوجيا المعلومات والإتصالات
Real-Time APIs: Trends and Adoption
The unprecedented growth of the API management market
is fueled by demand for modern APIs connecting
applications and devices to accelerate digital
transformation, as well as for real‑time insights and
analytics on API performance and usage.
From a business perspective, APIs play a pivotal role in
digital transformation, which industry analyst IDC believes
companies must achieve soon if they hope simply to
survive, let alone compete, in today’s rapidly changing
business landscape. Despite the importance of digital
transformation, IDC notes in its recent survey, APIs – The
Determining Agents Between Success or Failure of Digital
Business, that a full 25% of companies haven’t committed
to completing their digital transformation within the next
decade.
Modernization for the Many, Not the Few
APIs are not relevant only to technology companies, either.
According to the IDC survey, most companies in many
verticals already use an API management platform,
including 72% of media and business services companies
and 71% of financial services firms. Even companies in
traditionally “tech‑light” industries are using an API
management tool: 60% in retail and wholesale, and 52% in
both private healthcare and education. Today, every
business, regardless of its industry, is becoming a
technology company.
IDC refers to companies that have adopted an API
management platform as “API focused” and those without
as “API laggard”. They found a substantial difference in
how well the two groups capitalize on their digital spend by
generating revenue from digital channels, which range
from ecommerce platforms to mobile apps and online
events, such as webinars and video streaming. A quarter of
API‑focused companies attribute up to 30% of their
revenue to digital channels, but only 10% of API‑laggard
organizations can say the same.
API Demand Across Borders
IDC expects the amount of API traffic to increase
dramatically in the next two years, across both industry
verticals and geographic regions. Overall, 71% of
organizations expect to increase the amount of API traffic
they generate and handle during that period.
IDC calculates that as a result, API call volume will increase
by at least 25% and up to 75% for about half of all
businesses in the financial, retail, telecom, utility, and
manufacturing sectors. It predicts that same range of 25–
75% growth for half of all businesses in the US and DACH
markets, and 41% in the UK and Ireland.
This massive increase in API calls requires a management
solution that is dynamic enough to adapt to growth in
demand, traffic, and other changes in consumer behavior.
Almost half of top‑tier organizations are already planning to
futureproof their digital performance by investing in API
management and traffic management platforms
such as NGINX Controller, which enables teams to define,
publish, secure, monitor, and analyze APIs, while keeping
developers in control of API design. Organizations that lag
behind on this trend need to adopt application
modernization platforms if they wish to stay relevant for
their customer base and stand out from competitors over
the next decade.
Navigating the Challenges for API Modernization
A major challenge for most businesses lies in the real‑time
performance of their API calls and reducing related latency.
Over 90% of organizations expect a latency of under 50
milliseconds, while almost 60% expect latency of 20
milliseconds or less.
Similarly, over half of businesses surveyed by IDC indicated
that one of the larger challenges they face is to implement
an API management platform that can deal with an
increasingly common mixture of containerized and
cloud‑native environments. This can often appear
intimidating, if not clunky, to IT teams that have more
experience with monolithic environments.
According to IDC’s research, over a third of businesses
consider complexity – related to both applications and their
infrastructure – to be a top challenge when managing APIs
in a microservices environment. That isn’t too
surprising, however, when any confusion over
microservices and service meshes can make modernization
a daunting task to tackle.
These teams, however, need to allow for the possibility of
improved simplification, performance, and insights in order
to solve such challenges in API management. Just under a
quarter of surveyed companies noted difficulties in
deployment and consistently maintenance of their API
estate, while another quarter need better analytics and
performance. While API complexity and security are
barriers to early API adoption, 41% of organizations look
for an API management solution which is simple and easy
to use.
A best-in-class API management solution tends to be
lightweight, flexible, portable, and able to run on
containers to support microservices-based apps. It must be
able to handle API traffic for both traditional and modern
apps without introducing additional complexity. Crucially, it
cannot -under any circumstances – compromise on
performance. Don’t let your API management solution (or
lack thereof) be your organization’s downfall.
