The Enterprise Will Make The Same Mistakes With API And Microservices That They Did With SOA, Because Essential API Concepts Go Right Over Their Head

I would say the enterprise space fleet has successfully shifted their course, heading in the general direction of everything API. SAP, Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, and the rest of the usual suspects have pledged their faith to APIs, mobile, and IoT, all in a very public way. For those of us who jumped off the SOA bandwagon a while back (getting on the API bandwagon, yeehaw), this can be amusing to watch, cause the API bandwagon is better y'know?. ;-)

I sincerely hope that these large companies can make a shift towards an API way of life, or a microservice devops way of operating, or whatever the cool enterprise kids are calling it these days. Some companies will find success in these areas, while many, many others will just talk about it, and buy a wide range of vendor services that will help them talk about it—there will be a lot of money to be made (and spent).

The thing I fear, is that many of the core principles of why this whole thing is working will go right over the heads of many technologies and business leaders in the enterprise. Elements like simplicity, transparency, openness, and functioning in a decoupled, decentralized way. You are the enterprise, many of the essential ingredients of API, are just fundamentally at odds with what you are. You are a big, complex, powerful, and political corporate presence—a beast that does not like being taken apart, reinvented over and over, and being forced to work in concert with other internal, partner, and public resources, in an open way.

This doesn't mean that some enterprise entities won’t be successful—some will. I will be carefully watching the waves of enterprise organizations, for these tech savvy few, who internalize the core philosophy around APIs, successfully uploading their corporate soul to the API singularity. However, I predict I will have to work very hard to find these companies amidst the wreckage of the enterprise organizations that make the same mistakes they did with SOA, because APIs are just not compatible with their DNA, and ultimately will be rejected for reasons that are more enterprise than they are API.