
Armed with APIs, developers will drive the composable enterprise - jenlankford
http://gigaom.com/2013/10/12/armed-with-apis-developers-will-drive-the-composable-enterprise/
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eranation
Or in other words, SOA is back, we just call it now "API".

Loosely coupled APIs and services is an old idea, Amazon live by it, even
internally. However it is true that most enterprises failed to adopt it. And I
agree with the article that companies that write every piece of functionality
with API in mind, will have the upper hand in the long run. And those stuck
with monolith closed systems will eventually pay a price due to inability to
adapt to rapid changes.

If calling it API will convince the decision makers to provide budget for
internal APIs even though no customer is paying for it directly, then I don't
mind. But this is not a new idea. the problem is how to justify ROI for making
your code API friendly (doesn't go without saying by the way, there is a
price, of backward compatibility, documentation, decoupling etc). For most
CEOs this is a waste of time unless there is a direct revenue path from it
(e.g. a customer pays for it). It's hard to justify extra effort on the code
to management when all you can say is: it will pay off in the long run
(imagine the link to the relevant XKCD here)

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sinzone
SOA is not back. It never left. It just much more mature now and easy to
implement thanks to RESTful APIs.

~~~
Daishiman
Agreed. A few years ago SOA = a bunch XML-defined web services with ill-
conceived and complex grammars + J2EE "enterprise" stuff and unusual return
formats.

The maturity of REST has resulted in simpler return types, more mature and
easier-to-use serialization libraries, and explicit, English documentation to
define interfaces (for the most part). It's a welcome change.

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AznHisoka
Is it just me, or is this article filled with a lot of complicated buzz words
and hyperbole?

"APIs have eaten software, and they’ll go on the eat enterprise architectures,
too."

Yes, that API someone did a few months back that allows you to do a GET and
POST "F *ck you" 10 different ways will eat software indeed. As will that API
that gets a random LOLCat pic.

~~~
6cxs2hd6
> Is it just me, or is this article filled with a lot of complicated buzz
> words and hyperbole?

A helpful site for biz tech writers on a tight deadline is
[http://bullshitipsum.com/](http://bullshitipsum.com/)

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drblast
Right on. In the future, all applications are just going to be collections of
remotely callable objects, with just a bit of local glue code to tie
everything together.

This is going to be even bigger than Sun RPC, DCOM, or even CORBA!

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iambateman
Damn. Nice.

This article is really true, and is terrible news for Microsoft. Many great
applications do one thing well.

Github --> source control (and issue track, ok whatever). Dropbox --> File
storage on devices Sublime --> Code editing MailChimp --> Email Marketing

Hopefully, the days of doing everything within one program are over. The
"microsoft word can build a website" concept needs to die hard.

Developers have always been building on top of people's solved problems, but
we are slowly learning to formalize that into a sustainable business agreement
via API, which is exceedingly good for the pace of growth.

A good application over the next few years might take Twilio, Mailchimp,
Dropbox, and Github and add something uniquely special on top.

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taeric
To me, the "web" is currently as successful as it is, not because of the APIs
by which you access data, but by the fact that it is a lot of data. Most of it
publicly accessible.

Some of the markup is "semantic," which is certainly nice, but even that which
isn't has a way of being figured out by people.

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coldcode
A noble concept. I first read this in the original J2EE documents which
imagined a future where you just connected EJB's together to build apps.
Didn't work out that well. It's not as easy to build tiny pieces of apps as
people thought.

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jason_wang
As a civilization, we went from "grow what you eat" to "buy what you eat."
Today, every member of our society specializes in something and collectively,
we cover the overall needs of the society. This transformation took place a
long time ago for our civilization and the same transformation is now taking
place in technology.

My company, TrueVault ([https://www.truevault.com](https://www.truevault.com))
is definitely betting on this trend by specializing in being the data backend
for healthcare apps, sites and devices.

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0xdeadbeefbabe
Armed with marshaled data, developers will drive the composable enterprise.

Hey lets bring back ASN1 and call it something hot.

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ismaelc
[http://mashape.com](http://mashape.com)

