API-driven Economy?

I just went to a couple of sessions at the API World going on at the San Jose Convention center. I heard all kinds of new terms thrown within a span of couple of hours - the new API driven economy, iSaaS (integration software as a service), iPaaS (integration platform as a service), APIM (API management), BaaS (Backend as a service), etc. Then there was confusing & overlapping mixture of ideas in microservices, containers, connectors, API's..all in the space of system integration. There were lots of young software developers at this conference and booths from companies I have never heard of - Jitterbit (Enterprise iPaaS), Back4App (backend dev. via Parser server), PubNub (real-time API), Rigor (API monitoring and testing). I took a deep breath and thought of all these ideas over last 3 decades - api's, subroutines, reusable web services, service-oriented-architecture, integration via connectors, assembly of interchangeable parts from common libraries, etc. Welcome back to the future!

I see the urgency of this now that we have so many products and platforms in every category. A speaker from Jitterbit showed how Cisco's marketing software stack has 39 different technologies - SalesForce, 6Sense, Eloqua, App Annie, Live Agent, etc. They do functions like campaign management, CRM, email blast, mobile notification... This is definitely not the ideal solution. Jitterbit wants to be the mediator via API's to consolidate all these based on activities and work flow. No wonder, this Alameda-based startup is doing very well. I was not surprised to learn that SalesForce & private equity firm KKR are investors in Jitterbit.

Gartner predicts enterprise application integration market to be $33.5B by 2020 (CAGR of 7.1% from $25.5B in 2016), whereas the integration platform as a service (iPaaS) will be $3.6B by 2021 (CAGR of 41.5% from $526M in 2016). The data integration market is going to reach $12.2B in 2022 from $6.4B in 2017 (CAGR 13.7%). Gartner says, "IT leaders should combine on-premise integration platform, iPaaS, iSaaS and API Management capabilities into a single, yet modular enterprise capability." Gartner defines this whole space as Application Integration Platforms.

I think it's time we consolidate all these terms and bring real clarity. Current marketing hype of API driven economy does not help much. What used to be a programmer's term (api - application programming interface) is now marketed as a broad term to solve the world hunger problem.

The goal has not changed - we want integration of heterogeneous systems (both inside and outside the enterprise) to be highly efficient, transparent, and less labor intensive.