developer experience for apis

nomossoftware nomos-software.com

Developer ExperienceWhat can you do about it

API Days, Barcelona, May 2014

Tricia Balfe, CEO

[email protected]

www.nomos-software.comCopyright © Nomoséire Limited 2014 trading as Nomos Software nomossoftware

Contents

The Importance of Developer Experience

Developer lifecycle & headaches

Who can help

What can they do

Lessons from the past – notes on costs

Summary & about Nomos



• Paypal, Apple, Square,Telcos - Mpese … http://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/28075-the-telco-banks-of-the-futu

• PSD2 Payments Services Directive 2 in Europe includes proposal to require banks to open customer bank accounts / payments services to third party providers

Innovation outside banks

Regulatory push

Technology

Digital Business is important – consider trends in banking

http://thefinanser.co.uk/files/129683968-payments-innovation-jury-report.pdf

Consumer adoption of mobiles and tablets

Open banking APIs that allow third parties to build innovative mobile services



API ProvidersApp

Developers App Users =

Digital Business needs Developers

Banks, Telcos, Google…

Social banking, conferencing & music services…

Consumers & Enterprises



Parasoft, http://blog.parasoft.com/bid/119041/Infographic-API-Integrity-How-Buggy-Are-Today-s-APIs

Developers need to be able to do their job

Frustrated? Walk away ….

Build costs too great (developers salaries)? Walk away ….

COST


Digital Business is Important

Digital Business needs Developers


Poor developer experience = no Digital Business


Consider the Developer Lifecycle

Build Operate Maintain

Register

Learn the APIs

Build & Test integration

Monitor APIs

Troubleshoot problems

Prepare for new API versions

Upgrade & test

Improve developer experience across the lifecycle


Developer Headaches

Learn the APIs

Test the integration

Build

Poor error responses –from live systems and from sandboxes

Poorly tested APIs

Poor, fragmented & out of date documentation

Slow responses from support teams

Operate

Monitoring ALL the APIs their App depends on

Anticipating issues before they impact customers

Troubleshooting issues when system returns poor error responses

Maintain

Frequent changes to APIs

Detecting compatibility issues with upcoming API versions


Who Can Help?

API Providers

API Platform Providers

Provide actively-maintained automated support and test environments for the developers for all releases

Publish automated notifications on API status – API downtime, warning on API deprecations etc

Provide tools for monitoring and testing multiple APIs targeted at API users

Consume notifications on APIs published by API Providers


Automated Support and Test Environments

Immediate contextual feedback

Integrated & interactive

documentation

Actively & easily maintained for all

API versionsCovers many

error scenarios

Characteristics

Available 24/7 allowing developers to continuously learn & test

RuleX from Nomos Software is used to build API Support Environments

Suggests Corrections

More details: http://www.slideshare.net/nomossoftware/nomos-software-supporting-developers


Example Support Responses

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

And can send back “corrected” API calls


API Providers can use API Platforms

API Proxy on API Platform

Support ServiceAPI Endpoint

API Call

Developer

Etc…

API Call

API Platforms are a great place to embed automated support

Details on Apigee integration : http://www.slideshare.net/nomossoftware/nomos-software-interactive-support-on-api-platforms

Attach business logic to the API call – easy to maintain, no impact on running environment


Monitoring & Testing – Multiple APIs

API Monitoring – can integrate soapUI tests

Monitor many APIs at once

Define API test suites

Support continuous testing

Consume notifications from API Providers

Runscope Radar

RuleX – build test suites tailored for your API usage

90% faster to build business logic related tests

API Tools – collect & manage all APIs in one place


Our Experience – Lessons

Help > 15 large European banks in 10 countries onboardcommercial customers to their

SEPA payments interfaces through automated online

support services

Supporting IT teams in 45 countries

IT Teams need good support

What we learned

+

What we do

Bank support teams need automated support tools

“Our biggest problem is lack of support from the bank” - Large Bank Customer

“The automated support system has been a life saver” - Bank Support Team


More lessons from the Past

Outcome might not be NO business – it might be VERY COSTLY business

Banks charge for payments rejected due to errors

Large E-invoice processor has 100 staff dedicated to manually correcting invoices

StockMonkey.comEstimated cost of rolling out small change to format used by card payments processor

1 Billion USD

Processors bear cost -100 Staff doing manual corrections

Automatic charge applied if a payment is rejected because of errors in the request -covers the manual handling & correction of payments. Rejection rate for payments processors can be > 5% . Very costly.

100 Billion USD yearlyIntegration Spend, way back in 2007, DataMonitor report


Summary


API Providers can help : With enhanced support & test environments,

automated notifications

API Platform Providers can help : With monitoring & test tools for a collection of APIs

Poor developer experience limits opportunity for Digital Business


About Nomos

Fast to build, easy to integrate with API delivery infrastructure like API Platforms, and proprietary sandboxes

We provide Smart Support Environments that help customers & partners work with APIs, 24/7

Tricia Balfe, CEO

[email protected]