APIs are the products of the 21st century. As we build out API systems, we find that we are constantly learning from product journeys. We propose a new kind of supply chain - the Integrated Supply Chain for APIs (ISCA) - which is needed by any organization looking to create and monetize API products, either directly or indirectly. In this session, Asanka will outline our vision of the ISCA, identify five key patterns for success, and give a blueprint for creating a digital business based on API products.

1. Building an Integrated Supply Chain for APIs
August 2021

2. Hello!
Asanka Abeysinghe
Chief Technology Evangelist (former Deputy CTO)
asankaa AT wso2.com

3. 3

4. 4
Evolution of Products
Source: https://www.productevolution.org/2018/02/on-the-origin-of-the-word-processor/

5. 5
Evolution of
Products
Source: https://www.productevolution.org/2017/05/tree-of-life/

6. 6
Supply chain
A supply chain is a network between a
company and its suppliers to produce
and distribute a specific product to the
final buyer. This network includes
different activities, people, entities,
information, and resources. The supply
chain also represents the steps it takes
to get the product or service from its
original state to the customer.
Source: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/supplychain.asp Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/usdagov/

7. Consumption
Sales
Distribution
7
Evolution of Supply Chain
Source: https://thenewstack.io/a-successful-api-strategy-needs-a-digital-supply-chain-and-a-thriving-ecosystem/
Manufacturing
Sourcing
Experience
(by Customers)
Registration
(by Customers)
Deployment
(of Digital Solutions)
Development
(of Digital Solutions)
Discovery
(of Data & Services)
Industry Supply Chain
Digital Supply Chain

8. Software is eating the world.
- Marc Andreesen, Co Founder Netscape -

9. Every company is a software company.
- Satya Nadella, CEO Microsoft -

10. 10
New product experience

11. 11
API-centric Architecture
https://github.com/wso2/reference-architecture
Centralized Decentralized

12. 12
Evolution of APIs
Pure Technical Semi Technical Managed APIs API Products
Isolated
Early
Integration
Message
Oriented
SOA Pre MSA/IoT MSA
● EDI
● File sharing
● Sockets
● Message
queues
● Data to data
● Monolithic Apps ● OLE/OLE+
● COM/COM+
● CORBA
● RMI/EJB
● WebDev
● ESB
● SOAP
● BPEL
● BAM
● REST
● HTTP/s
● AMQP
● MQTT
● Servicemesh
● gRPC
● GraphQL
● Websockets/
hooks
● AsyncAPI

13. APIs
Products of the 21st
Century
13

14. Products of the 21st Century
Directly Monetized Indirectly Monetized Combined physical/digital
14
Backbone for digital transformation and API Products

15. 15
Products exist in
and
rely on ecosystems
Image: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/541417186425569576/ (Pandora)

16. 16
Marketplace
Image: https://www.hotels.com/go/hong-kong/temple-street-night-market (Temple Street Night Market)

17. Federation enables multi-party business models
https://wso2.com/library/webinars/federated-apis-across-ecosystems/
17
#1
e.g. Scania
Internal federated marketplace #2
e.g. BNY Mellon
Partner marketplace #3
e.g. Smart Dubai
Closed group marketplace
#4
e.g. ideabiz
Shared revenue marketplace #5
e.g. Apigate
Aggregator marketplace

18. 18
Emerging supply chains for APIs in finance
Banks
Banks
Banks Payment Gateways Mobile Wallets New Cards
Third Party Providers Fintechs

19. 19
Emerging Supply Chains for APIs in Telco
Cell Provider
Cell Provider
Cell Provider

20. 20
Cell Provider
Cell Provider
Cell Provider
Cell Provider
Cell Provider

21. 21
Product Lifecycle
Management
Logistics
Management
ERP &
Financials
Supply Chain
Management
Integrated
Supply Chain
For Physical
Products
20th Century Physical Product Integrated Supply Chain

22. What can we learn from the physical ISC?
Product Lifecycle Management API Product Management
ERP & Financials API Insights and Monetization
Supply Chain Management API Integration & Enablement
Logistics API DevOps and Management
22

23. 23
API Devops &
Management
API Insights & Monetization
API Product
Management
API
Integration
21st Century Integrated Supply Chain for APIs
Integrated
Supply Chain
for APIs

24. 24
SAP, Salesforce, legacy integration
Industry adapters (HL7, FHIR, EDI)
Data integration
Event and streaming integration
Monitoring
Billing and monetization
Analytics
Tracing
Integration with subscription
platforms
Reportinga
CI/CD pipelines
Kubernetes, multi-cloud, and
hybrid deployment
Microgateway
Onboarding of APIs from
multiple systems
Blue/green and canary
deployment
Developer and user onboarding
Subscriptions
SSO for developers
API documentation
API marketplaces
API design and product creation
Lifecycle management
Market testing
Organisations need an integrated platform to deliver this
API Devops &
Management
API Insights &
Monetization
API Product
Management
API
Integration
Integrated
Supply
Chain
for APIs

25. ISCA does not mean
digitising existing supply chains
New end-to-end digital systems
to enable new business models around APIs
25

26. Quantum Duality of “API as a business” and “API as a technology”
26
API Market Vision
Federation and Business Models
● Heterogeneous API landscape -
- Federation & multi-party
● Governance of API products across
- multi-vendors
● New Monetization models
● API Product Management focus
Move to the cloud
● Multi-Cloud & Hybrid deployment
● Kubernetes runtimes
● Automation
● Massive scale of API infrastructures
● Cloud business models
Polyglot and heterogeneous
● Polyglot microservices and macro-services
● More than OAS:
- GraphQL, AsyncAPI, gRPC,
- Kafka, NATS, etc
● API aggregation and integration
Modernizing development
● Microgateways & Service Mesh
co-deployed with workloads
● CI/CD enablement
● Unified API development
● Serverless
● Kubernetes development
environments

27. 27
The shift to Cloud Native
Traditional Cloud Native
Virtual Machines and vSphere Containers and Kubernetes
Centralised CoE based Integration API-led decentralised integration
APIs for Partners APIs everywhere
API Gateway Edge Gateway and Microgateway
Synchronous Request-Reply Event-Driven Async
Heavyweight all-in-one systems Lightweight, decoupled, deploy anywhere
Proprietary licenses Open source by default
Pay upfront Pay as you go

28. 28
API Federation: Enabling multi-party business models
● Hosts a collection of APIs from different providers on a single
federated marketplace.
● Unified analytics, policy enforcement, subscriptions, billing, etc.
● Open source specification for publication to a marketplace:
https://github.com/api-federation/
Publisher Developer Portal Analytics Identity
AWS Gateway
Azure Gateway
NGINX
WSO2 Gateway

29. 29
Web traffic
83%
APIs now account for more
than 83% of the web traffic
(Akamai)
Revenue
$1T
$1 trillion is up for grabs
through the redistribution of
revenue through APIs
(McKinsey 2017)
Transactions
25%
25% of revenue flows
through APIs
(Vanson Bourne 2018)
Overview of the business impact,
based on various sources.
APIs

30. Let’s connect
30
https://wso2.com
https://wso2.com/strategic-consulting/
asankaa AT WSO2.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/asankaabeysinghe/
@asankama
Image: https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/crn-exclusive-new-google-cloud-partner-advantage-program-launches-today