How Many APIs Does the Average Enterprise Have?
Understanding the technology, business, policies, and people of Apis.| API Evangelist
I struggle to share the entirety of my vision for API governance as it requires prior awareness of multiple API specifications and the current state of governance within the industry—with some leaning into what could or should be next when it comes to regulating our business operations. I need to distill my work out of Postman, Bloomberg, and API Evangelist down into a series of steps I can articulate to investors, our Naftiko engineering team, and the wider community to help demonstrate ho...| API Evangelist
A common refrain you hear from investors and advisors as you navigate the technology landscape is that it’s a bad idea to do consulting. I also hear that you should be selling as early as possible, but you should by no means be doing consulting. This isn’t new. It’s something I heard from folks throughout my time as API Evangelist, and it’s a battle I repeatedly lost at Postman as the Chief Evangelist. I’ve long understood the belief system behind it and have challenged it, but I wa...| API Evangelist
I have done a lot of thinking about how difficult it is to get people on the same page, but also keep them there after my time standing up an API governance program at Bloomberg last year. I went there to learn more about the divide that exists between product and engineering folks, and I strengthened my awareness of what goes into this divide when I mapped the API and team landscape, while trying to govern HTTP, GraphQL, and event-driven APIs. I am thankful that I got paid to learn at such a...| API Evangelist
At Naftiko, we are reshaping integrations as business capabilities through the alignment of the technical details with business strategy using domain-driven design. Domain-driven design is a fundamental concept from the world of software development and heavily used in shaping how we produce APIs, but it is something that when you mention out of an API producer context, making things more about API consumers, people seem to get stuck and confused. We have had conversations with folks who poss...| API Evangelist
I don’t usually talk about what is around the corner. I am more about understanding history, and telling stories in the present. However, after several cycles now I am feeling like can develop a “vibe” for how this moment will shake out around the corner. Meaning, as the current artificial intelligence bubble reaches peak hype and begins shrinking back down to reasonable levels of investment and building, what can we expend in coming months and years when it comes to the integration and...| API Evangelist
Understanding the technology, business, policies, and people of Apis.| API Evangelist
I have several folks asking me what I mean when I say capability in the context of what we are building with Naftiko. I have been writing about API capabilities in the context of the journey from API resources to API experience for some time. I used to call a certain type of Postman Collections capabilities for some time, but I want to refresh my definition of what I mean, build on the work of other smart people, and publish something I can share with others to help articulate what I mean whe...| API Evangelist
I have been having conversations with a lot of folks about API integration, consumption, and automation as I work to build Naftiko. I entered into these conversations with folks in the early part of this summer without much empathy for people doing artificial intelligence, and have come out the other side with a lot more empathy for what is happening and where we are headed. I still strongly feel that AI is overhyped and overblown and obfuscate some very dangerous realities around labor, clim...| API Evangelist
I have become an API standards realist over the years. Yes I believe we should all strive for a common good through the standardization of APIs, but I’ve become all to aware of the misalignment of incentives out there across different companies and industries when it comes to why we standardize. In short, people rarely standardize for the greater good. They standardize for their own selfish needs. You can see this in action when it comes to the standardization of job posting–as in the job...| API Evangelist
There is lots of renewed energy around API discovery latetly, but this round is in service of Agentic AI automation. There is a lot of speculation surrounding Anthropic’s release of an MCP Registry, and how it can once and for all solve this pesky problem. Bruno Pedro’s newsletter recently has been dedicated to this subject, exploring what an OpenAPI registry can bring to the table, and even the role APIs.json plays or doesn’t play in the conversation. He said something at the top of hi...| API Evangelist
Business alignment in the world of API integrations is essential—from both a producer and consumer perspective. The challenge is that there are different bubbles of business alignment that leaves people aligning towards the business goals which may not reflect their own long term business outcomes. Moving between the API producer and consumer perspective for so many years, as well as between startups and the enterprise, you realize that the phrase “business alignment” means different th...| API Evangelist
Before I understood the business and politics of the API hustle I used to cry fowl here on API Evangelist about the sudden shifts in plans and pricing for APIs, as well as the unfair and restrictive rate limits put in place for the APIs I depended upon. These things still hurt, and often negatively impact my business, but I am much more aware of the market forces at play now and I understand that it is just “markets working things out”.| API Evangelist
One of our trusted advisors for Nafitko sent this tweet over to me about there being a big consultancy opportunity involved with “finishing folks Replit and Loveable apps”. I chuckled because this cycle has emerged after outsourcing to [fill in blank] country, and a variety of low-code and no-code trends trends throughout this centruy. It is always fascinating how much money there is to fix broken things and not actually doing the proper planning and design, while also bringing in the pro...| API Evangelist
I have hit the wall one more time in the last five years when it comes to my belief that people producing APIs will want to do the right thing. Whether it be API design-first, productization of APIs, governance, or any other narrative we’ve constructive narrative we’ve constructed to guide SMB, SME, and enterprises forward. The majority of this rhetoric is in service of selling you something, and the few people who do care about doing APIs well within large organizations just do not have ...| API Evangelist
As we work to build Naftiko, we are interested in talking with people about what they are facing when it comes to putting APIs to work. Throughout the summer we will be having conversations with people we know, and hopefully many people we do not know about what they face when it comes to API integration and consumption at scale. We are looking to understand the business and technical challenges everyone is facing when it comes to the consumption of any APIs and data currently, or as part of ...| API Evangelist
While at API Days in NYC a couple weeks ago, I heard from several people that they missed the Breaking Changes podcast when I was the host. And that the show had a certain tone and line of questioning they found extremeley useful in their work. I agree. And specifically it was season two of Breaking Changes where I was able to hit a stride with the conversations where I was learning a ton, which is something that tends to translate into a meaningful show that helps the audience stay engaged. ...| API Evangelist
I have been engaged in a number of conversations with folks since I left Bloomberg last August, consulting and exploring different ways that I can work with startups and enterprises to govern APIs. I have been open to full time positions and consulting work, while still investing in content and artifacts for API Evangelist. I have also been cultivating and steering my work as API Evangelist towards some potential startup ideas for when the right people come along. Well, the right person has c...| API Evangelist
I see two distinct types of API governance unfolding within enterprises who view their operational culture and their workforce having different levels of understanding and respect for leadership. I get asked to come in and provide advice, guidance, and even enforcement of API governance, and once you begin to ask a few questions about their current understanding of what API governance is and what business or engineering would like to accomplish with API governance–you can usually put enterp...| API Evangelist
I have heard it several times now, folks in charge of API governance sharing with me that they are finding success in injecting API governance into developers workflow using artificial intelligence. They had tried changing behavior with teams through meetings, sprints, workshops, and other approaches unsuccessfully, and now they are finding that developers question things less when it is introduced via artificial intelligence available in their integrated development environment (IDE). It is ...| API Evangelist
I learned over a decade ago why API discovery isn’t a solvable problem within the world of technology—the people in charge of the narrative don’t see business, they see technological solutions. Pundits in the API universe often give a blank nod towards APIs.json as part of the API discovery solution, but rarely ever put it to work and adopt as part of their narrative. Why? Because APIs.json provides references to the technical bits they care about, but also provides references to the bu...| API Evangelist
I am an equal opportunity hater of automobiles as well as the Internet. I see them both as equal destroyers of the earth and humanity. Of course, one can argue that both of these technologies have benefits, but once can also easily argue they are widely misused and have very damaging effects on our world. As I was thinking about these parallel universes I was pondering how automobiles are also an “agentic”, in the same sense that “agentic” AI is being hustled right now. They are both ...| API Evangelist
While continuing to process the Spectral rules in use by API producers as part of their efforts to govern their API operations I am always looking for interesting and useful patterns being applied by API producers, and I recently came across the use of standardized OpenAPI extensions to override governance rules in specific circumstances. This particular use case was about enforcing encryption on server URLs, but it also provides a way to override the need for encryption using x-sandbox OpenA...| API Evangelist
You hear a lot about feedback loops with customers in technology and the world of APIs. There are entire disciplines dedicated to establishing and managing feedback loops with customers as part of the software development lifecycle. However, in my experience few technologists and engineering leadership within startups and enterprises are actually interested in listening to, let alone engaging with customers via these feedback loops. As you can see with the current state of technology and arti...| API Evangelist
I learned about the usage of the word “open” the hard way during the Web 2.0 dayz. I was the frontline of the open data and open API (and OpenAPI) push. Like with APIs, I was the face of various charges forward to open up government, higher education institutions, and other structural aspects of our world when it came to calls for opening up data and valuable digital resources. It took me about five years to learn that the calls for opening up data and other digital resources was about op...| API Evangelist
The spell of AI is strong today. It is difficult to escape. Most do not have a choice. I am not here to do the work for folks to compare the latest AI moose diarrhea with reality, but I am here to remind you that you do not need agents to automate your business. I am here to remind you that it is not the most cost effective or efficient way to automate your business. I am here to remind you that the current state of generative AI is about applying a predictive approach to automation when you ...| API Evangelist
I know many of us have bought into the API management messaging and the APIs as a product vision over the last ten years. It is a logical response to obtaining and maintaining a handle on the API sprawl that emerged as we made the switch from to power web and mobile applications. Turning this sprawling and chaotic digital factory floor into a well known orchestration engine to automate the enterprise is the proper response to what has been happening. The problem comes in when you come up agai...| API Evangelist
Understanding the technology, business, policies, and people of Apis.| API Evangelist
Understanding the technology, business, policies, and people of Apis.| API Evangelist
Understanding the technology, business, policies, and people of Apis.| API Evangelist
