Whether using an app to check-in for a flight, finding out when the Uber will arrive, or messaging a friend, an API will have connected the individual to this data.

APIs—application programming interfaces—are the unsung heroes of the application economy. Indeed, the applications wouldn’t exist without them. APIs are sets of defined rules that govern how one application can talk to another, providing ready-made, universal access to whatever functionality an organisation needs to deliver.

On the web, APIs make it possible for services like Google Maps or Facebook to let other apps “piggyback” on their platform. For example, the way that TripAdvisor displays nearby restaurants on a Google Map in its app shows APIs in action. Similarly, the way an airline displays hotel and car hire offers beside the flight reservation details.

Organisations in the UK are no strangers to the possibilities that APIs provide. A global study commissioned by CA Technologies among 1,170 senior executives finds that 82 percent of UK organisations have now adopted APIs as a strategic business tool, with one fifth using them to drive new revenue growth initiatives.

APIs stimulate conversational commerce and other innovations

APIs are also inspiring innovation. The study shows that 89 percent of UK organisations report an improvement in their ability to leverage third-party developer innovation using APIs—higher than anywhere else in EMEA. By opening up and sharing select data with third-parties, these organisations are benefiting from partnerships by exposing services to drive new revenue channels. Among these innovations are ‘conversational commerce’ services that enable consumers to interact with brands or aggregated services using chat, messaging or other natural-language interfaces. For example, instructing your mobile device using natural language to book a flight and aggregating different services together to book a preferred hotel, restaurant or taxi partner at the destination.

While APIs themselves are not a new innovation, it’s more important than ever in the digital economy to manage them effectively. That unified approach to management enables companies of all sizes, in all sectors, to level the competitive playing field, and cope better with the rising volume, scale and volatility of customer-facing apps.

API management speeds up digital transformation

An API management strategy specifically enables organisations to create secure, and optimised APIs throughout their lifecycle, and at enterprise scale. The bottom line is that API management accelerates digital transformation by bringing systems together, securing integrations, delivering better customer experiences faster and enabling enterprises to capitalise on new opportunities.

To maximise the potential that APIs can provide, organisations need a sophisticated approach to managing the API lifecycle in the application economy. The following seven steps should be considered to implement an effective strategy:

1. Define your strategy in business terms: Developing APIs in a haphazard, opportunistic way will achieve little in terms of business value. Take time upfront to define the vision, strategy and priorities for what you want to accomplish with your API programme. And make sure that you can clearly articulate the business outcomes.

2. Measure what’s most important: The true indicator of a successful API programme is how easily your customers (consumers or external developers) can use your APIs. Adopt metrics that reflect this, such as customer and partner satisfaction, and growth in transaction volume.

3. Invest in the right talent: Your own team may be comfortable using internal APIs in their work. But publishing APIs to external developers, and leveraging external APIs, requires different skills and a different mind-set. Be prepared to provide additional training for all your existing development and operations staff. If needed, recruit new talent such as API owners, product managers and analytics specialists.  Your APIs are your company’s product, treat them accordingly.

4. Provide the right infrastructure: The foundations of a successful API programme are the tools and processes that enable the creation, testing, publishing and management of APIs throughout the lifecycle. A robust infrastructure reduces cost, time-to-market and development challenges.

5. Cultivate and nurture app developers: Consider the overall developer experience with your APIs. How easy is it for them to discover your APIs? Do you provide sample code and documentation to facilitate their use? Do you support your APIs with problem reporting and resolution management?

6. Implement robust security: APIs often provide a connection to highly sensitive corporate data, so make sure that the right users, apps, and devices have the right access. To avoid costly security lapses, build controls into your API programme from the start.

7. Plan for scalability and performance: As use of your APIs expands, you will need to deploy more robust API management capabilities to enable the full API lifecycle—from design and creation to governance. To maintain a superior user experience, monitoring and management capabilities are essential to ensure that performance is not compromised, especially when API usage grows significantly.

Read more: Why 2017 is quickly becoming the year of the API economy

SYS-CON Events announced today that Fusion, a leading provider of cloud services, will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 20th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. Fusion, a leading provider of integrated cloud solutions to small, medium and large businesses, is the industry’s single source for the cloud. Fusion’s advanced, proprietary cloud service platform enables the integration of leading edge solutions in the cloud, including cloud communications, cloud connectivity, and cloud computing. Fusion’s innovative, yet proven cloud solutions lower our customers’ cost of ownership, and deliver new levels of security, flexibility, scalability, and speed of deployment.

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Telephony was among the first communication platforms to be used and has been around for nearly 150 years. For most of this time, it existed as traditional hard-wired, exchange based technology.

Over the last 10 to 15 years a revolutionary change occurred with the advent of IP Telephony (IPT) using Internet technology coinciding with the popularity of other services such as the World Wide Web, streaming, and online. This is when the term Unified Communications was first coined, bringing together separate means of communication such as telephony, video, and chat. Arguably it was the first radical move in a long-established industry and such was the popularity of this shift that today predominantly only IP Telephony products are available.

Most providers of IP Telephony products supply similar products with differentiators such as reliability and features. It has been common for businesses to buy, install, and maintain them themselves as was the case with their predecessors, traditional Telephones.

Over the last three to five years with the popularity of the Cloud for IT systems, there has been another market shift- Cloud based telephony is now building momentum. This is a disruptive model for vendors involving a move from capital expenditure where systems are acquired to a subscription model where the service is paid for on a recurring basis.

Telephony can be a significant investment for companies but has a finite shelf life. Therefore the benefits for businesses using a cloud subscription model can be evident. It removes some of that long-term investment impact as a subscription should mean access to technology that keeps pace with innovation and developments.

There is a reduced need for skills to design, buy, build and maintain a system that is based in the cloud and therefore those services, in theory, can be more cost effective, due to economies of scale with the added benefit of increased security. In addition, cloud strategies are becoming the norm for many businesses and so there is almost an inevitability for most about contemplating the transition.

Cloud Telephony does have some downsides and companies should consider if ownership of their Telephony system is a better option than moving it to public cloud offerings from Microsoft, Google, and Amazon etc. If they are going to make such a move then businesses should consider which provider will give them what they need and how to switch. It should be kept in mind that the offerings of traditional Telephony vendors will be arguably more feature rich, having a longer provenance and history of reliability. If any of these are critical to your business then public Cloud services may not be the optimal fit.

For some sectors, telephony may be too important to trust to the cloud. Public cloud is only as good as the internet used to connect to it. If your organisation is transacting business over the phone then you may not consider public cloud to be mature or reliable enough to trust with your livelihood. In general, people don’t really think about telephones too much as we are all very familiar with them having existed on our desks for years. It is not until they don’t work that they suddenly become important. Whilst the internet is more stable than once it was, it is still not as reliable as on-premise systems and vendors will argue that their offerings can be more robust.

There are alternatives, such as hybrids which use a mixture of private cloud, public cloud, and on-premise equipment. Private cloud is more self-contained and reliable but it comes at a price premium compared to public services. On-site equipment does have its advantages – being able to monitor and fix the equipment yourself may provide control and peace of mind but it must be purchased, maintained and upgraded. This has capital, time and staffing costs. 

Other factors are also having a disruptive effect on the general shift away from telephony at home and work. People are not making as many telephone calls as they used to. Many of us use email, messaging and on-line services to communicate and transact business. Younger people coming into the workplace prefer other means of communication and often see speaking to someone as a last resort. These factors over the next 3 to 5 years will inevitably reduce the reliance on Telephony for most.

Cloud providers can prove to be very ‘sticky’ and so this is an additional consideration when choosing a provider. Ensure that it’s clear how your service can not only be moved to the provider but also moved from and what penalties (if any) may be charged.

Telephony is a simple application but quality matters. The audibility and reliability aspects of public cloud services are improving but are still in their infancy. Companies should consider this before switching. The costs should be examined closely as a monthly or annual subscription charge can often look cost effective but charges can mount up when added services are included. Reviewing the overall cost and the possible benefits to a business can be complex and may require external expertise.

Cloud telephony and unified communications strategies will improve over time and in many ways the shift to using these services in the workplace is almost inevitable. But whilst there are choices and different solutions are available it is important that companies weigh up what it important to them and make an informed decision.

Do you believe the cloud is the answer for telephony? Share your thoughts in the comments.

SYS-CON Events announced today that T-Mobile will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 20th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. As America’s Un-carrier, T-Mobile US, Inc., is redefining the way consumers and businesses buy wireless services through leading product and service innovation. The Company’s advanced nationwide 4G LTE network delivers outstanding wireless experiences to 67.4 million customers who are unwilling to compromise on quality and value.

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DevOps at Cloud Expo – being held October 31 – November 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA – announces that its Call for Papers is open. Born out of proven success in agile development, cloud computing, and process automation, DevOps is a macro trend you cannot afford to miss. From showcase success stories from early adopters and web-scale businesses, DevOps is expanding to organizations of all sizes, including the world’s largest enterprises – and delivering real results. Among the proven benefits, DevOps is correlated with 20% faster time-to-market, 22% improvement in quality, and 18% reduction in dev and ops costs, according to research firm Vanson-Bourne. It is changing the way IT works, how businesses interact with customers, and how organizations are buying, building, and delivering software.

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The term “digital transformation” is practically ubiquitous right now, widely affecting both corporations and consumers alike.

Take, for example, the shift in the nature of owning digital assets. Less and less do we buy physical DVDs, CDs or even music downloads, but instead access an almost unlimited supply of music, movies and TV programmes on demand via our Spotify and Netflix accounts.  The modern day challenge is to figure out where is the content you want to absorb.  Was the show on Sky On Demand, Sky on my DVR, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple movie library or my personal collection on a computer? 

This same shift can be seen in businesses who, rather than guard their in-house IT developments, or invest heavily in white-labelled solutions, are now increasingly operating in the cloud.

CenturyLink itself recently launched its Cloud Application Manager to ease application deployment and management across multiple clouds, both public and private.     

But, while the cloud doesn’t necessarily define digital transformation, it undeniably plays an important part.

Agility and flexibility

While everyone has their own definition of what the phrase means, most would agree that, at a fundamental level, digital transformation is concerned with applying and capitalising on technology to improve or dramatically change the operation of a business. Its success isn’t always as a result of the technology per se, but rather of how that technology is exploited by the organisation in order to redefine its operations, its strategy, or its business model.

Given the speed at which things are changing today, it’s the businesses that are able to respond fastest to that change that are most likely to succeed. Large organisations can no longer assume that they’ll remain successful simply as a result of their size or market leadership. By employing technology that drives responsiveness, agility, and effective collaboration, businesses can better serve their customers and indeed, it’s through doing just this that faster-moving start-ups are able to take on – and often beat – their more established competitors.

In order to take on these more nimble start-ups, more CIOs are changing their IT strategies, improving the agility and flexibility of their business so that they can better respond to new trends and customer demands. And, as we’ve seen recently with the efforts of traditional banks to compete with newer fintech players, whole industries and markets are now being forced to adapt. But blindly following their peers or making changes just because “everyone else is doing it” isn’t enough; a successful digital transformation strategy is one that will drive real value for the business.

Sufficiently supported

Recent changes in consumer retail habits have resulted in a shift toward highly personalised experiences. As this has filtered into enterprise environments, many businesses are looking to digital transformation as a way of enabling “hyper personalisation” to provide them with the single customer view they need to tailor their offerings and interactions.

While putting in place the data analytics required to deliver the necessary insights, businesses are also ensuring their products are SaaS-ready, and that their applications are supported by platforms with sufficient resilience and scalability to cope with any peaks in demand.

Although this might sound straightforward, however, the most challenging applications to transform will tend to be those that are co-located or hosted on on-premise legacy infrastructure. It can prove extremely frustrating attempting to achieve greater agility or faster response times from these particular applications, especially when you take into consideration requirements around regulation, data sovereignty, security, integration complexity, contractual certainty, and service level agreements.

No “one-size-fits-all” approach

Without proper planning, embarking on a transition into the cloud can often lead to mistakes. As there’s no “one-size-fits-all” approach, businesses should consider how a move to the cloud will work as part of its broader transformation strategy, and how it will meet its demands and those of its customers.

Those businesses with highly scalable workloads requiring flexible or short-term computing resources, and that can be easily switched on or off, will find public cloud to be most suitable, for example. A private cloud, on the other hand, may be most appropriate for workloads that require predictable levels of resource for at least three years, and with more complex security requirements.

Alternatively, saving money over cloud, and supplemented with bare metal for short-term needs, grid computing with three-year workloads can run in a custom security environment, using managed hosting. In addition, any older applications having reached the end of their lifecycle can simply be left or moved into a co-location environment, to be integrated into other venues.

For those organisations with a legacy IT estate, however, a hybrid cloud model represents the key to a successful digital transformation, offering the flexibility to choose the best venue for each application and integrate into other environments.

Organisations with a strategy encompassing both public and private options increasingly find themselves requiring a number of cloud providers which, whilst a more flexible and efficient approach, can often be a lot for a CIO and their team to manage. Indeed, it can only truly be more flexible and efficient if the business has a clear view of how to manage both environments simultaneously.

Those businesses that manage to do this successfully, however, will be able to avoid vendor lock-in, automate application deployments, scale workloads across disparate hosting environments, and optimise their costs over time. It takes resources and constant attention to get this right though, and the consequences of getting it wrong can be very costly, and can easily negate the cost benefits of the project.

A less stressful option for increasingly stretched IT teams can be to use a managed services provider to provide a management layer that will minimise complexity at the same time as delivering promised savings.

Time to take stock

As customers’ purchase and consumption habits continue to evolve, so too will the demands they place on a business. Only by embracing and adapting to these changes can businesses hope to keep up with more flexible and agile competitors.

While digital transformation may appear to be the answer however, it’s not a panacea, and it’s important for businesses to take stock of where they are, what they want to achieve, and how they’ll face the challenges and opportunities they’ll encounter during the transformation.

Given the cloud’s importance, any migration strategy must be designed to ensure that customer-facing applications are sufficiently robust. Rather than just “putting them in the cloud”, consideration must be given to the application environment, and how those applications are managed, to ensure they’re right for the needs of the business.

No one can stand in the way of progress but, by identifying the best execution venue of individual applications and workloads, businesses can look to achieving the performance, cost savings, and agility that this age of digital transformation requires.

What are your thoughts on the cloud’s role in digital transformation? Let us know in the comments.

SYS-CON Events announced today that Infranics will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 20th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. Since 2000, Infranics has developed SysMaster Suite, which is required for the stable and efficient management of ICT infrastructure. The ICT management solution developed and provided by Infranics continues to add intelligence to the ICT infrastructure through the IMC (Infra Management Cycle) based on mathematical analysis and forecasting Big Data Analyze and Control.

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SYS-CON Events announced today that HTBase will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 20th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. HTBase (Gartner 2016 Cool Vendor) delivers a Composable IT infrastructure solution architected for agility and increased efficiency. It turns compute, storage, and fabric into fluid pools of resources that are easily composed and re-composed to meet each application’s needs. With HTBase, companies can quickly provision resources and deploy unique, mission-critical, self-designed solutions to add-onto or create any type of infrastructure as per the business requirement. HTBase is the first company to enable a true multi-cloud strategy, enabling organizations to automate movement of data and workloads between private and public clouds. This means that organizations can now move data and workloads between public clouds without any type of data transformation.

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