It can be difficult to convince people how important seeing and knowing where all the APIs within the enterprise are. When you talk about API discovery it often gets labeled as about developers looking for new APIs to play with or something more serious like securing the enterprise and keeping bad actors out. Knowing where all your APIs are and being able to see them contribute to every aspect of operating an enterprise, from building new things and securing infrastructure, but it really is about awareness and control over the enterprise supply and distribution chain–the problem is that most people have deemed seeing and knowing about APIs as something out of their wheelhouse.
Every person working at an enterprise organization makes 10-25K API calls each day. APIs are as essential and ubiquitous as electricity, and often just as misunderstood and invisible beneath everything we do each day. Startups have long understood the penetrating and extractive value of API resources, and large consulting firms always know where the APIs are within the enterprises they consult with. Power within the enterprise during the end of the last century resided around the database, but this century with the introduction of the Internet, that power has been fragmented and moves inside and outside of the enterprise via HTTP APIs.
If you know where the APIs are, have the OpenAPI and JSON Schema definitions of those APIs, and know where to find registration, logins, and the dashboards that help us see APIs, you are well on your way to accumulating and aggregating power. This is why starups want you to bake their APIs into your enterprise, so they can tap into this power. This is why you want your partners accessing your digital resources, because it increases the power that exists within your systems. Knowing where all your APIs is about discovery and security at first glance, but like the artificial intelligence giants are scouring the world for new sources of data, if you want to wield power and control in the future, make sure you are the one who knows where all the APIs are, and you will be just fine.
