We like to compare APIs with electricity here at API Evangelist. It really is the best analogy to help business stakeholders understand the importance of API governance, and to show them how we are still just in the early stages of the evolution of digital resources. Like electricity, application programming interfaces, or simply APIs are universal and in use across almost every industry. As with electricity in the early days every company putting this new universal resource to work is investing in their own production and distribution of APIs. In the early days of electricity things weren’t standardized and everything was custom, so can you imagine what some of the challenges and parallels are with APIs.
- Custom Plugs - Every appliance maker that used electricity had their own plugs for integrating electric.
- Proprietary Lines - Every producer of electricity implemented their own proprietary lines without sharing.
- Voltage - There were no standards for what violations should be used for making some very costly mistakes.
- Installation - The installation always requires a custom implementation by the vendor aware installers.
- Maintenance - The ongoing maintenance can only be done by the vendor who installed the electricity.
This is exactly how things are done with APIs right now. Sure there are some standardizations of the plugs and pipes. OpenAPI and JSON Schema help enable low-code and no-code, and you see the beginning of industry standards, but there are also regulatory standards beginning to tame things. But could you imagine if every appliance in your home or business required a custom electrical plug and it required a specialist from the vendor to come out and do the work? While we use this as an argument to support bringing more awareness to business stakeholders for why investment in API matters, it is also a reminder for everyone involved with APIs just how early on in the journey we all are.
