What drives API growth?

According to a recent IDC research sponsored by Axway, APIs have certainly crossed the chasm from technology to value-based solutions all around.

API Growth: Use and planned use of APIs

Many IT and business managers were asked what is their current and planned use of APIs.

Today, many enterprises see APIs as a technical software product, and the most important use cases reflect this point:

• 47% use APIs as an integration technology
• 45% use APIs as a SaaS integration technology
• 39% use APIs as a channel mechanism for the business

In the future, this perception will shift towards a more business-oriented paradigm. The highest future growth areas will be for the future:

• “As a way of joining up different lines of business and SBUs” (43%)
• “As an enabler of co-innovation through your organization’s value chain” (38%)
• “As the value in a business context will become the key driver of API adoption as customers seek value-based business solutions rather than generic API technologies.

APIs also help with co-innovation

Regarding co-innovation, the research asked, “Does your organization use or plan to use APIs to enable collaboration and increase innovation within your organization?”

49% responded “yes,” and 13% plan to going forward. Together, these two segments outnumber those not planning to use APIs in this way (28%) by over 2:1. Read how Techcrunch talks about the growth of APIs.

A surprising 10% of respondents were not familiar with APIs. These were comprised of 6% of IT staff and 17% of non-IT staff. The three industries where non-IT staff were least familiar with APIs was Business Services, Wholesale & Retail and Government.

Those enterprises that have implemented or plan to implement Customer Experience Networks are much more likely to use APIs to enable collaboration and innovation. These organizations are also less challenged than non-adopters when connecting to external third-party stakeholder systems.