Many enterprises struggle with what digital resources and capabilities to make available via APIs. It always makes sense to start with digital resources that offer value, but don’t have high security or private value. API Evangelist has long recommended just taking a look at what you already publish to your website and starting there. If customers or partners have asked for something and you’ve published it to a portion of your website as HTML, it should also be available as JSON. An interesting inspiration for where to start today comes from Mercedes-Benz which has an image API that provides access to their corporate brand, bringing the following benefits.
- Simple Resource - Making images available represents a simple, safe, and sensible place to get started with public APIs.
- Partner Access - Having brand images available in a self-service manner reduces support engagements with partners.
- Standardization - The 1st-party applications an enterprise produces can use the same APIs as partners and the public.
- Control - Having all branding assets available via APIs means they are easily updated wherever they are distributed.
- Experience - Teams producing the APIs gain experience publishing a simple API and can learn from how it is being used.
Many enterprises know exactly where they will begin when it comes to publishing APIs, but there are even more out there worrying about where they should start their public API journey. Mercedes-Benz provides a robust example of how you can standardize the publishing of the images and other assets around your corporate brand, and even charge for access to these resources by partners, media, and other consumers. This API scenario provides an end-to-end opportunity for enterprises to gain the experience publishing an API from design to production and think through the securing of digital resources and begin charging for self-service access—-giving your teams the skills they need before tackling other more valuable and sensitive digital resources and capabilities.
