My new partner in API crime Cloud Elements is helping motivate me to spend more cycles in 2016 on defining specific stacks of APIs, as part of my ongoing API industry research. I am taking the approach I've honed over the last five years in my core research, and continuing to push forward on specific areas of the API industry.
Cloud Elements calls their aggregated APIs -- Hubs, because they are working to aggregate them into actual usable APIs. My approach is meant to organize common API definitions, into specific groups. I do not go as far as aggregating APIs into a single API, and providing a platform, and tooling for you to actually work with the APIs.
Cloud Elements currently has 11 business API hubs defined, where I'm looking to push the space forward by defining 50 stacks:
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I am not in the business of pushing the overall number of APIs forward in the API space--this number means nothing to me in 2016. I am looking to better define what the most valuable APIs are, in some of the most meaningful areas of the Internet. Some of the areas I chose because they are core to web and mobile application development, others because they are important areas to the overall economy and society, with others just because they are frick'n cool!
You can see my earlier work in this area, present under the verticals section on the home page of API Evangelist, with my early look at the payment API space, and more recent email, SMS, and MMS research projects. I will step up the process, and apply it to these 50 research areas, establishing research projects, profiling the companies who are active, curated the news and tooling from across the space, while looking to get a handle on some of the common building blocks employed. As always my research will be openly available in near real time on each research project site, but there will be some resulting guides, and blueprints which I hold back to monetize--maybe partners like Cloud Elements, and others will help co-brand them, and make available for free.
I wanted to thank Cloud Elements for helping light this fire. We are still working out details of which areas they are interested in helping invest in, but their approach to hubs, and their general support of what I do via a sponsorship, has got this ball rolling. I have cleared my calendar, to ensure I have time to tackle this work in the first quarter of 2016. If there are other areas you'd like to see prioritized, let me know, I'm happy to bump up specific areas listed above, or add new items if they make sense.
