In The End Open APIs Will Not Win The War

APIs escaped out of the enterprise petri dish a little over 10 years ago. The exact date is not known, but we do, that sometime between 2001 and 2005 the concept of an APIs that used HTTP, jumped out of the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) toolbox, and began to flourish and grow.

During the period between 2005 and 2010, APIs remained largely unnoticed beyond the developer community, but by 2011, with the success of platforms like Twitter and Twilio, the powers that be began to take notice. There still wasn’t much respect for the method of exchanging resources via the open Internet, but some companies were now paying attention.

By 2015, the enterprise, as well as the government, has seen that APIs can do much more than just the sharing of photos, and social media wall posts. Now that you can actually deploy actual infrastructure, deliver valuable digital resources, the powers that be are taking notice. In the end, the concept of the open API will not win the war.

Open APIs will continue to be, but the concept has been identified, co-opted, and is now owned by those in control—it is done.