State ofEnterprise APIs
Understanding API Uses, Challenges, and Strategies
Who did we survey?
How do organizations use APIs?
Is an API strategy mission-critical for your organization?
Almost all respondents (97%) agree that executing API strategies successfully is essential to secure their organization’s future revenue and growth, and this survival is underpinned by a range of API roll-out use cases.
How is your organization using APIs?
Enterprises use APIs to enable partner collaboration (65%), develop and deliver products and services more quickly (60%), and create APIs as products for use by external developers (46%).
Are APIs an essential part of your organization’s digital transformation?
API-led digital transformation simplifies processes, enables efficiencies, improves scalability, and increases an organization’s scope for innovation.
“With APIs, developers can reduce development time and costs while reducing the risk of errors.” - CEO, consumer services organization.
What benefits are your organization hoping to achieve by using APIs?
APIs have a direct impact on customer experience, developer productivity, and business outcomes. Organizations have identified the key benefits of using APIs including an improved customer experience, accelerated path to innovation, better collaboration among developers, improved developer experience, and a strengthened competitive advantage.
How much will organizations invest in APIs and API infrastructure next year?
Enterprise leaders are prepared to make key investments in APIs and API infrastructure in 2022. On average, organizations will spend $23.6 million on APIs. Those in the financial services industry are placing even larger bets on APIs with respondents anticipating their API budgets will be more than $29 million for 2022.
What challenges has your organization faced while using APIs?
Although the benefits of implementing an API strategy are clear, almost all (95%) organizations face challenges when using APIs. As with the implementation of many technologies, when demand increases, so does the volume and variety of challenges organizations must overcome when working with APIs.
Can APIs accelerate our digital transformation?
The challenges and complexity of managing multiple APIs are acknowledged by senior decision-makers across most organizations, even among those that feel that APIs are the way forward for their digital transformation.
As different business units focus on digital initiatives in line with their objectives, API complexity increases organically while the overall governance of all the different API programs is lost.
Without the right staff and skills, these challenges may be hard for some organizations to overcome.
What is your organization’s maturity regarding an API program?
APIs are acknowledged by most as an essential part of digital transformation, and over half (52%) are in the process of incorporating APIs into their organization. Many organizations will therefore experience an increase in API complexity over time.
Do you believe your organization needs to improve the execution of its current API program or strategy?
Although the majority reported working on an API program or having one in place, 88% of the respondents indicated that there are challenges successfully executing their programs. At the top of the list — customer experience. Following closely behind is the need to accelerate the pace of innovation and eliminate technology silos.
What improvements does your organization need to make to execute its API strategy?
Senior decision-makers can quickly identify multiple improvements their organization needs to optimize current API programs and strategies. These vary by industry, but organizations need to make these improvements to leverage the many benefits associated with API strategies.
How important is it to your organization to partner with other organizations to collaborate and build new products and services?
84% of respondents report that it is extremely or very important to partner with other organizations who provide APIs to build new products or services. However, this is made difficult by the fact that most organizations (86%) do not have a single API platform that provides them with a centralized source for accessing all available APIs.
Would you want to adopt a solution that would centralize your APIs and enable developers to build, manage, publish, and consume APIs?
Senior decision-makers want a single-platform that can centralize the discovery and management of multiple APIs and help them overcome the range of challenges organizations face with their API program, namely API management, security, and governance.
Which of the following best describes the extent to which your organization is currently using a type of API platform?
Despite the importance of centralization to senior decision-makers, only a minority of organizations are currently using a single API platform.
What are the key benefits that you expect to see from the API platform(s) used in your organization?
Respondents reported the key benefits of a centralized platform, many of which will help businesses address key needs such as collaboration and management of multiple APIs. Organizations want better interaction between API builders and consumers (45%), greater agility (41%) and speed (37%) when developing and deploying APIs, and an improved developer experience across the development lifecycle (40%).