Another great APIdays event has come and gone. On December 11-12 in Montrouge, France, over 3,000 people gathered together to learn, network and immerse themselves in all-things API.
APIdays event
Axway was on hand as a proud Silver Sponsor at the APIdays event. Our engaging booth was the perfect place for participants to discuss APIs and get in touch with representatives for further information on digital transformation.
APIdays event day one got off to an interesting start. With over 3,000 people in attendance from around the world, the line to get in the building was out the door. After entering the building, you were off and running to the different API sessions with numerous topics to hear about how APIs affect our world–from banking, art to security to name a few.
Since it was not possible to attend every session each hour, as there were five to seven going on simultaneously, I selected different API topics to get a broader perspective on how they work in our everyday lives.
APIdays Paris 2018 introduction
To start the morning off, the opening keynote speaker was Tariq Krim, Founder, Dissident.ai. He spoke about the “Principle for the slow web, an ethical approach for building software.” The post Internet world was covered in his speech. Tariq explained that how all things now have consequences: from reading your e-mail to transparency in the modern world. He also spoke about GDPR and how people should have the power to use their software safely. Tariq concluded his speech speaking on how we should speak up for building our lives with future technology. His closing remark: “We need to humanize technology.”
State of API industry
Next up on the agenda was Paolo Malinverno, VP Research at Gartner spoke about the “State of the API industry.” According to Mr. Malinverno, “two out of three CEOs and CFOs anticipate a business model change.” He stated that “people want change.” He also said that people will use Hackathons more to innovate in the future. Also, “the fundamentals for the API Economy still work.” Apps have value, thus leading to more APIs.
For Paolo, the megatrends for APIs are:
- Raging digital transformation
- Open banking
- Platforms and ecosystems
- Privacy and culture
- Microservices are helpful as you can mix with APIs
Digital identities
The next event consisted of digital identities: “How to build an easy to use and secured digital identity solution.” Juliette Delanoë, cofounder and Chief Product Officer for Ubble.ai. She started her speech with “How do you identify”? This is a hot topic which ranges from how to secure your transactions online, from banking to KI process. She mentioned that “identity fraud is growing and costs over five to 20 billion euros a year.”
New concepts and trends are in the works for ID verification. You can take a picture of your ID and face with an API. Great concepts but problems still exist. APIs need to be secured and chains need to be built for storage.
Unfortunately, online identifying is not a perfect world. Digital models for financing digital identity are still unclear.
Art and APIs
The next event I attended was very interesting for the art lover in me. “Authentication Programming Interface: How authenticity can be built into your APIs.” Bernardine Bröcker Wieder, the cofounder and CEO of Vastari Group gave a gripping speech. Vastari Group is “an online resource that brings together private collectors of art with curators for exhibition loans and tours.” Their goal is to enhance clarity to facilitate exhibit collaborations.
Bernadine explained that with APIs, “you can authenticate metadata in art.” You can further explore and compare differences in the artist work to conclude whether a painting is fake or real. For example, you can do a side by side comparison of the ears of Van Gogh in several paintings to determine the style and differences from one to another.
Further, you can authenticate a painting by discovering difference textural layers within paintings via APIs. There are three main things are bringing it all back to the artwork:
- Standard language
- Trusted data sources
- Physical to digital
What comes from art, in the end, is vital, authenticity, signature, documents and certificates. With APIs, you can, therefore, leverage data to authenticate a painting, identify trends in the artists, along with the background of an artist. APIs make it all happen! Learn what an API product is here.
Beyond API Products
Axway’s Laura Heritage, Director Solution Management spoke about going “Beyond API Products.” Back in 2011, there were only 3,000 open APIs and now there are about 20,000. This is a huge explosion in the API world. In Laura’s speech, she spoke about “APIs leading the way for innovation with over 90% growth.” As an example in Brazil, the 10th largest bank in the world by market value, Itaú, uses about 10 billion APIs via transactions. Therefore, they are utilizing innovative ways to process payments such as What’s App payment.
At Axway, we have partnered with Streamdata.io to make the API strategy successful. A key point is APIs are more vital to digital transformation than ever. We need to get on board and embrace the API journey. This includes thinking about the whole API lifecycle and makes sure you are getting the full-on benefits of AMPLIFY API Management.
Axway workshop
At the Axway workshop, “Organized chaos—API and Microservices Traffic Management,” Axway’s David McKenna led the room with a fascinating presentation. He mentioned that there’s a tug of war between the provider and the consumer.
APIs have many problems to address. Most APIs have been written for product’s web app and don’t just assume they will work in another context for consumption.
Microservices architecture promises to increase an organizations agility and therefore innovation by breaking software down into small pieces. These services communicate with APIs on various protocols. This increases agility but can cause chaos. The workshop focused on injecting chaos into the structure for development organizations to unlock innovation.
Further events that I attended were:
- API security and Identity Intelligence hosted by Bernard Harguindeguy, SVP and CTO, Ping Identity.
- The digital transformation people platform, hosted by Ronnie Mitra, Director for Design, API Academy
- The competition of knowledge is dead, let’s welcome the competition of creativity hosted by Kay Lummitsch, Founder, The Digital Journeyman Foundation
Day two
Day two was another riveting day of API networking and information. Rousing seminars were presented on topics such as “APIs for a programmable society,” this was conducted by Mehdi Medjaoul, Founder, APIdays. Other soaring topics covered were “Blockchains like biology,” “Just a spoonful of Agile makes the transformation go down,” as well as “Our global IT system, energy saver or climate destroyer” to name a few.
All in all, with so many great events over a two-day period, what came across clearly is that APIs are everywhere from art, phones to banking. The future is with APIs. If you want a real digital transformation, you need to be part of the next-wave of APIs for further development.
APIdays was an excellent networking and learning event to be among industry colleagues to learn more about the captivating world of APIs.
Learn more about API Gateway and security and why you need it here.