Why Should Organisations Adopt an API Platform for their Development Strategy?

Featured article by Emily Peyton

 Image Source

The world of digital technology is always changing. One of the most challenging parts of this change is trying to keep up with the latest trends in software development. For many companies, this means spending more time and resources on developing software themselves, rather than focusing on their core business. This leads to a lot of wasted time, energy, and money that could be put into other projects that will have a bigger impact on your bottom line.

Luckily, there are ways for organisations to lower these costs without sacrificing quality or security. An API platform can help you minimise overhead while still keeping up with the latest trends in software development. To learn more about how an API platform can benefit your company, read on!

Adopting the API Platform

Due to the competitive nature of businesses, the majority of which is driven by technology and the need to meet the demands of customers, businesses are left with no option but to adopt the API platform.

However, there is a lot to learn about APIs – from the differences between API management vs gateways, lifecycle management, and API design – to the underlying architecture behind them, in order to ensure that you can offer the best possible APIs for your customers.

This is where the API platform comes in. By incorporating an API platform into your organisation, you are able to manage your business while increasing your productivity and reducing overhead by choosing the right APIs that provide the perfect fit for your business.

Adopting this platform comes with other advantages, key among them:

Agility

Organisations need to find a way through which they can map their APIs to the value of their businesses. This makes it possible for them to yield a programmable enterprise. This is an enterprise that comprises interconnected APIs that organisations can easily use to quickly build applications and solutions that meet the demands of their customers.

Coming up with innovative solutions in an organisation is a continuous process. This explains the reason why they (organisations) need a well-set pipeline that allows continuous development, integration, and testing.

In addition, organisations need to be able to dictate the flow of their API platform. With the platform, they are able to gain control over their software enterprise and its value, meaning that they are able to achieve agility in their development strategy.

Innovation

Adopting the API platform in the development strategy means that organisations are able to innovate and come up with new solutions in a safe environment. For instance, there are businesses that have been in operation for many years, meaning that they have accumulated a lot of data over that period.

Combining, prototyping, and evaluating this data is not possible without the use of APIs. This explains the reason why businesses need to find new ways through which they can use their core business functions together with the accumulated data.

In addition, the API platform produces APIs that can be consumed easily. This means that building a new solution is quite easy and fast. For instance, building an application that needs map functionality does not mean that you have to build everything from scratch. You can simply implement a map API such as the Google Maps API. This reduces the time taken when releasing new solutions.

Automation and Scalability

The API platform has given organisations the opportunity to automate most of their business processes. For instance, let us take the human resource department in an organisation. Today, we have multiple cloud-based HR software backed by APIs. These software applications automate the tasks of this department making everything easy and straightforward.

In addition, an API can be integrated with an existing system to address changes in the demands of the current customers. Instead of having to redesign the entire system, something that could take a lot of time, organisations can simply plug an API with the functionality that they need into the system.