APIs Are Key to Industry Growth

by Kin Lane on 06/19/2011

At the Glue Conference this year in Colorado, I sat on a panel called, Whats Next for APIs?. In my talk, one area I focused on, was how industries would organize and put APIs to work.

There is a growing trend within specific industries. They are coming together and pushing for standards, interoperability, and ways to work together.

I'm seeing evidence of this within the customer service industry. An industry association called NetworkedHelpDesk.org is using APIs to connect together customer service applications and establish a seamless way to communicate among industry partners and vendors.

Customer service applications are in high demand, and potentially connected with many other applications, so it is critical that they communicate and inter-operate efficiently.

NetworkedHelpDesk.org has brought together other applications such as Twilio, SugarCRM, Freshbooks, Atlassian and Zendesk, with different types of applications including ticketing systems, bug trackers, development trackers, knowledge bases, and CRM software.

The goal of NetworkedHelpDesk.org is to deliver on the promise of the cloud, and enable disparate systems to collaborate with each other, using a standardized API format for the customer service industry.

I think we'll see more industries coming together like this, to establish ways they can work together more efficiently using APIs.