Date post: | 18-Dec-2014 |
Category: |
Technology |
Upload: | elastic-path |
View: | 459 times |
Download: | 0 times |
Elastic Path™ Elastic Path™
Business Challenges Solved by APIs
What Every Executive Should Know
May 25, 2012
Elastic Path Software Inc.
David Chiu
Matthew Bishop
Kin Lane
Elastic Path™ Elastic Path™
Introducing Elastic Path Software
Digital Commerce for Innovators
• We help the world’s biggest brands sell digital goods and services
• We provide a flexible digital commerce platform and expertise in
commerce strategy and implementation
• #1 ecommerce blog www.getelastic.com
• For more on-demand digital commerce resources
www.elasticpath.com/resources
Elastic Path™ Elastic Path™
What every executive should know
• Distilling digital disruption into specific issues
• The promise of an API strategy
• The current reality of API technology
• Why the developer experience is critical
• What makes a great commerce API
• The future of API technology
• Taking it to the real world
Elastic Path™ Elastic Path™
Device and plan selection
What exactly are we trying to solve here?
Elastic Path™ Elastic Path™
Digital disruption defined
Source: Forrester Research, Inc Source: Forrester Research, Inc
Elastic Path™ Elastic Path™
Digital disruption distilled
Singular experience Everywhere Consistent Relevant Embedded Unobtrusive Partnered Fast Cheap
Elastic Path™ Elastic Path™
• Commerce-as-a-service
• Allows core data and capabilities to be easily shared
• Loops commerce into your BI stream
• Puts commerce into every customer experience
• Isolates the “do” from the “how” and “why”
• It’s like the Borg from Star Trek
• Empowers developers to do all these things
Singular experience Everywhere Consistent Relevant Embedded Unobtrusive Partnered Fast Cheap
Commerce APIs are great at these things (in theory)
Elastic Path™ Elastic Path™
The gulf between promise and reality
Elastic Path™ Elastic Path™ Entitlements Billing Customer Care Analytics
PIM Acquisition Monetization Subscriptions
Magical API Magic!
Storefront Mobile OTT Apps CMS/CEM
Embedded
In-App/In-Game
Social
Partners
The Promise
Elastic Path™ Elastic Path™ Entitlements Billing Customer Care Analytics
PIM Acquisition
Conventional REST API
Subscriptions Monetization
$$$
$$$
The Reality
Elastic Path™ Elastic Path™
A good API gets the job done. A great API works like a superpower.
Elastic Path™ Elastic Path™
What separates to good from the great?
• A good API uses the REST architectural style
• A great API conforms to Level 3 or 3+ REST
• Very hard to do this with SOAP or RPC
– SOAP is not designed for simplicity and human
understanding
– RPC does not communicate very well and is
usually an existing programmatic API
Elastic Path™ Elastic Path™
A model centered on the user, not the system
• The names and data shapes should look like what
you are trying to accomplish
• You don't have to learn how their system functions in
order to use it
• Netflix's API uses terms and actions pulled straight
from their user experience
Elastic Path™ Elastic Path™
Consistency applied to all resources
• Facebook's Graph API is a great example
– All the resources behave the same way
– View the same, post the same, search the same
• You learn it for one resource and you have it for all
the resources
Elastic Path™ Elastic Path™
Thin data objects
• Be wary of APIs that have huge objects
– These are hard to maintain on both sides
• Look for APIs that have expands to let your client
shape the response
– Our API calls this feature “zoom”
Elastic Path™ Elastic Path™
Stateless
• The API should let you call into it at any point
without precursor calls, other than authentication
Elastic Path™ Elastic Path™
The value of a great API is speed and agility. Go from an idea to a prototype in hours, not weeks.
Elastic Path™ Elastic Path™
Questions
For more on-demand digital commerce resources
www.elasticpath.com/resources
1.800.942.5282 (toll-free in North America)
www.elasticpath.com