There is still a common idea that the word manufacturing is associated with old factories, building dirty machines, and the din of metal clanging. Not only has this idea been wrong for decades – think of the impressive assembly lines of car manufacturers – it is now being blown out of the water by the fourth industrial revolution. 

The idea that APIs are a major driving force in the digital economy is not new. Gartner went as far as saying we were living in an API economy back in 2016. In just five short years, the world has become ever more driven by data and cloud-based systems.  

The emergence of blockchain has been synonymous with the rise of crypto. However, blockchain is revolutionizing many aspects of technology, such as supply chains, data management, and security. It operates in similar areas to APIs – which commands the question, can APIs and blockchain work together, or do they clash? 

In 2020, businesses faced down the challenges posed by successive lockdowns and social distancing through embracing digital transformation. Few could have imagined API trends would have been accelerated so quickly and extensively. The global economic picture has been shaken, and like a kaleidoscope, the patterns are starting to fall back into place. 

The value APIs bring to the modern world is hard to quantify. They are invisible to most of us yet so integral to our lives. Without these back channels churning away in the background, the digitized world we live in would simply grind to a halt. It would set back many technological advances by at least a decade or more, with inflexible communication systems, less accessibility to real-time information, and restricted automation. 

Having gone from being a bit-part player to the mainstay of businesses in just a decade, APIs are pivotal to the processes that make companies tick and generate growth. In our previous posts, the team at Universal Adapter has gone into detail and explained how APIs work and what they do. 

APIs form the backbone of many businesses, serving as the vital connection between back and front-office systems. Its role in UI and UX is invaluable in the sense it enables companies to simplify the customer journey when they visit websites and applications. Given its critical role in the recording and management of data and providing a seamless customer experience, API security is paramount. 

In the race to get ahead of competitors, it can be easy to overlook the importance of API governance. As the beating heart of digital transformation strategies for companies, a structured oversight for APIs is essential. The role of a governance structure is to ensure existing APIs are: 

To understand the impact of API performance on a business, we need to look at how users and customers behave online. Almost half of the internet users expect web pages to load in two seconds or less, with each second of loading time potentially leading to a 7% drop in conversions. In these instances, time does cost money.