api strategy slides - supporting developers in adopting apis
DESCRIPTION
Slides presented by David Garry (CTO, Nomos Software) at the API Strategy conference in Amsterdam, March 2014 ("APIs in Financial Services" track). Open banking and APIs provide new mechanisms for delivering mobile and online digital banking services. But IT teams and developers encounter many hurdles in adopting new interfaces and APIs. Developers are key in the online digital services / API value chain. If you create hurdles for developers, you run the risk of alienating them and you block your route to revenue. The slides explain some of the hurdles encountered by developers, and suggest how they can be addressed effectively through providing Smart API Support Environments.TRANSCRIPT
nomossoftware nomos-software.com
Encouraging and Supporting Developers who adopt your API
API Strategy, Amsterdam, March 2014
David Garry, CTO
www.nomos-software.comCopyright © Nomoséire Limited 2014 trading as Nomos Software nomossoftware
Banking is evolving – API explosion
• Number of financial services public web APIs deployed in 2012 increased more than 250% year over year - rapidly moving trend.
• By 2016 50% of banks in 'The Banker's’ top 1,000 world banks will have launched a public web apiplatform.
Gartner Nov 2013 Digital banking and the Role of APIs, App Stores and Apps.
• Telcos will be our future bankshttp://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/28075-the-telco-banks-of-the-futu
• Connectivity and convenience now expected
• By 2016 3X devices per person. 21 billion devices on the planet)
Innovation outside banks
Customer behaviour
21 billion devices
What is driving change?
José-manuel Benito, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/s, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Human-evolution-man.png
www.nomos-software.comCopyright © Nomoséire Limited 2014 trading as Nomos Software nomossoftware
What does this mean for banks?
Gartner again: Banks CIOs need to :
Create an open banking strategy in 2014 if this has not yet being developed• Launch one to two public web APIs
by late 2014• Launch a customer app store by
2015.
APIs, apps and app stores will be central to the way banks deliver digital banking.
Open Banking provides the head of retail banking, commercial or
investment services with the ability to create new methods of
interaction, value and service delivery through API platforms,
apps and app stores
Banks need an excellent API delivery process
www.nomos-software.comCopyright © Nomoséire Limited 2014 trading as Nomos Software nomossoftware
Banking Case Study
Help > 10 large European banks roll out new payments
interfaces to commercial customers
Supporting IT teams in 45 countries
Poor responses
Poor testing
What we encountered
Poor support
• APIs not designed for easy adoption. Poor error responses causing frequent confusion
• APIs and API integrations are poorly tested and unfit for public adoption
• API support is poor: documentation in numerous locations, doesn’t match systems, changes frequently. Online support is fragmented, slow and often out of date
+
What we do
Similar issues with many public APIs
www.nomos-software.comCopyright © Nomoséire Limited 2014 trading as Nomos Software nomossoftware
Poor Responses
Day 1
Developer tinkers for a while - can‘t resolve problem.
Step 1
Day 16
Developer tries sending API request. Error identified. Immediate response. Doesn‘t diagnose problem.
Developer posts message on internet forum asking for advice.
Support team posts reply with some suggestions13 messages later, 4 issues fixed so far...but still not working.
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4
API still not working...
For details of developer / support trail messages from Nov 6 to Nov 22 see: https://developer.mastercard.com/portal/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=53248131&focusedCommentId=57704512#comment-57704512
• Poor response codes / messages make it very difficult for API user to interpret why an API Request failed
• This message trail is taken from the MasterCard Developer Portal. After 16 days and 13 messages later, the developer still does not know why her request failed
www.nomos-software.comCopyright © Nomoséire Limited 2014 trading as Nomos Software nomossoftware
Poor Responses
Fine grained control of the response message and response code is invaluable in educating API users
Twilio call for verbose error messages
Payments gateway ‘limits’ responses
Bank rejects 10,000 payments
Google API ‘Invalid Value’ response
Bank rejected all 10,000 payments requests if the mandate date for one payment was dated in the past
Payments Gateway provider limits (i.e. controls) information in the API responses for security reasons
https://www.twilio.com/engineering/2014/02/05/better-error-messages
www.nomos-software.comCopyright © Nomoséire Limited 2014 trading as Nomos Software nomossoftware
Poor Testing
http://blog.parasoft.com/bid/119041/Infographic-API-Integrity-How-Buggy-Are-Today-s-APIs
APIs and their integrations are badly tested
Testing specialist Parasoft, 2013 report
SaaS payments testing specialist, XMLdation, identifies issues in 70% of messages from sample of 10,000
www.xmldation.com
www.nomos-software.comCopyright © Nomoséire Limited 2014 trading as Nomos Software nomossoftware
Poor Support
Developers like support that enables continuous
iteration
Limitation of Internet Support Forums
• Message trails can span days/weeks. Answers not provided in real time.
• Level of participation of the community determines the quality of the forum.
• Information goes out of date. Need maintenance to remove information that is no longer relevant.
Poor documentation, slow responses Two of the reasons why Facebook API won ‘Worst API’ in developer survey http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/11/facebook-wins-worst-api-in-developer-survey
www.nomos-software.comCopyright © Nomoséire Limited 2014 trading as Nomos Software nomossoftware
Poor Support
Slow response time
Multiple sources of documentationDocumentation for SEPA payments messaging is spread across 4 documents (ISO20022 / European Payments Council / EBA Clearing / Individual Bank)
12 month response timehttps://forum.hootsuite.com/hootsuite/topics/google_plus_scheduled_photo_post_not_working
www.nomos-software.comCopyright © Nomoséire Limited 2014 trading as Nomos Software nomossoftware
Smart API Support Environments Resolve these Problems
Report meaningful, useful (error) information to API user
Smart API Support Environments = Sandboxes that improve the API User Experience
Learning thru trial and error
Immediate contextual feedback
Integrated sandbox and documentation
Are actively maintained
Indepth testing
Features
Not ‘static’ API documentation spread across multiple locations
Captures support team’s expert knowledge, old and incorrect information is removed, is updated for new releases
Supports
API user discovers everything about how the API works
Covers all error scenarios – simulates responses. No surprises when API user sends requests to real systems.
www.nomos-software.comCopyright © Nomoséire Limited 2014 trading as Nomos Software nomossoftware
Contextualised Feedback and Integrated Documentation
Pin-point the location in the API request/response where an error is occurring
Name the error and link to API documentation, so user can root-cause and understand the problem.
Responses are contextualised
And linked to documentation
www.nomos-software.comCopyright © Nomoséire Limited 2014 trading as Nomos Software nomossoftware
Best Practices
The best supported APIs have very good support environments
Smart support environments provide a living portal where sandbox and API documentation are merged, so developer can read about, run and test the API 24/7 all in one place
www.nomos-software.comCopyright © Nomoséire Limited 2014 trading as Nomos Software nomossoftware
Smart API Support - Benefits
Fron Manfred Bortenschlager speaking at Operator API Seminar in Mobile World Congress, Barcelona 2014
http://www.scoop.it/t/api-mag/p/4016630311/2014/02/26/operator-apis-what-developers-think
Reduce Support Costs, API owners
Faster ‘time to learn’, API users
API user ‘retention’
www.nomos-software.comCopyright © Nomoséire Limited 2014 trading as Nomos Software nomossoftware
Bank Systems with
APIs
Bank Systems with
APIsDevelopersDevelopers
What this means for banks…
Developers sit in the value chain between API owners and end customers – block developers and you block revenue
Encourage and support developers with Smart API Support Environments
Banks and other organisations need an excellent API delivery mechanism as they open up APIs into their systems, and compete for ‘developer’ market share
Corporate Treasuries and Retail Customers
Corporate Treasuries and Retail Customers
Online / Mobile
Banking Services
Online / Mobile
Banking Services
=