I was reviewing one of the many entries in my review queue of companies who are doing interesting things with APIs, and stumbled across the data visualization API—Lightning. Their implementation grabs my attention on several fronts, but their focus on delivering their API within your own infrastructure via a Heroku button, is one of the most relevant aspects.
This approach reflects a seismic shift occurring in how we deploy APIs, and how we deploy architecture overall. You need a data visualization API, let me deploy my API into your cloud, or on-premise infrastructure using popular approaches to virtualization—developers do not need to go to the API, the API will now come to you, and live within your existing infrastructure stack.
I’ve been talking about wholesale APIs a lot lately, showcasing the white label approach by some API providers, and exploring within the evolution of my own infrastructure, and as more savvy API providers jump in on this opportunity, you’ll see more stories emerge trying to understand the shift going on. Lightning is accomplishing this with Heroku, and their embeddable button, but companies who embrace a containerized micro-service centered approach to API deployment, will have a wide open playing field for buying and selling of the wholesale API driven technology being deployed across the emerging API economy.
