The Whole Ball of Wax

Originally published on Tumblr.

An API is the interface to a company. Not part of the company. Not some obscure technical service that the company happens to sell. The whole company.

It didn’t used to be that way. 5+ years ago, an API was a very technical idea. It was the programmatic interface to a software service. The API allowed either a deep connection to the service – an alternative to a file transfer, for example – or a means of extending it. In no case was the API the product itself.

This is no longer true.

Today we have a huge ecosystem of companies whose only product is their API. I say “huge” with tongue firmly in cheek. It’s huge compared to yesterday; it’s minuscule compared to what’s coming. In fact it’s hard to imagine any business not ultimately becoming an API.

Is that too extreme? I don’t think so. Today’s API-only companies make this very clear.

An API isn’t just a technical specification.

That specification is documented and supported by tools. All of that decoration is a marketing function.

So an API is marketing.

The goods behind the API are consumed in exchange for something else, usually money. And use of an API is governed by a contract.

So an API is sales.

API companies employ armies of people performing jobs central to the running of any type of company. Without them, there can be no API.

So an API is legal, accounting, and operations.

The API is the purest distillation of every function within a company. If anyone in the company isn’t working to improve the API, they aren’t doing their job.

Pure doesn’t mean good of course. There are good APIs, average APIs, and hard-to-believe-they-exist APIs. The whole gamut. But they aren’t good because they adhere to all the REST principles, or because they always return the right HTTP code, or because they’re hypermedia. They’re good because every person in the company wakes up every morning and asks themselves how they could make the API better than it was yesterday.

APIs aren’t something a company has or something a company does. APIs are the interface to the whole company. Every facet. The whole ball of wax.