Visions from the API Economy

I’m always looking for solid examples of how more and more of our every day world is being driven by APIs. Examples I can use to help explain APIs to every-day business folks.

I came across one example that will speak to many business executives today via an Apigee Innovator Spotlight on their client TradeKing. When asked about the vision of their API program Dan Raju CIO of TradeKing says:

We are one of the top-ranked online brokerages in the country, growing very rapidly. We manage people's assets, give them a set of capabilities to trade, and offer an extremely transparent pricing structure. However, we recognized that our customers’ demands for next-generation interfaces are rapidly changing, and our API helps us stay in front of that. We anticipate that in the next phase, the API will be a meaningful revenue driver for us. It is already opening us up to new markets. We will continue to develop our own platforms on the API and incentivize and engage our development partners. At the end of the day, it’s all about delivering value to our customers, and the API will continue to help us drive increased value at an accelerated pace.

Raju hits on all the best of the API buzzwords including transparency, rapid change, meaningful revenue, open to new markets, and delivering value to end-customers.

I feel TradeKings vision of their API program, speak to larger visions of the API driven economy we are now immersed in, and provide a great example we can reference when helping other companies not just understand what an API is, but the imperative for their companies to embrace APIs and actively join the API economy.

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