Telephones were not of much use until the people that wanted to call one another had them. Cellular phones and networks had limited value until carrier interconnection and roaming agreements enabled subscribers to make calls to others, even if they were on another provider’s network, and to enjoy their services in a broader geography. And the promise of ubiquitous communications was not realized until we moved away from the walled garden to the open internet model.
Today we’re seeing a similar dynamic related to the wide array of applications available. While these applications? may be somewhat useful on their own, they become a whole lot more valuable if they are opened up to additional applications, ecosystem partners, and/or users. Application programming interfaces?can be used to make that happen. APIs enable organizations to expose data and services securely, publish it to partners in a scalable manner, charge for usage, revenue-share with developers, and track billing in real time.
Forrester (News - Alert) Research has referred to the API as the poster child of digital transformation. That said, it makes perfect sense that APIs are the focus of one of the events co-located with ITEXPO (News - Alert) on Feb. 8-10, 2017, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
All About the API (www. allabouttheapi.com) is the leading conference aimed at communications solutions providers that want to better understand the value of APIs and how they can employ them to make their offerings more relevant to customers and more valuable to their bottom lines.
Dialogic (News - Alert), Rigor, SmartBear, and teli are among the companies that have signed on as sponsors of this event, which will feature sessions discussing the central role APIs are positioned to play in the future of communication, what to consider in formulating an API strategy, how to create contextual experiences by embedding voice and messaging info apps, and how APIs can allow for more innovation and faster time to market.
Indeed, enabling innovation and expediting time to market is really what APIs are all about. They allow for that by helping communications services providers make their network resources available to a wide array of applications in a more easily accessible and consumable way. And they enable easier integration of various existing or new applications to allow communications capabilities to be introduced into users’ existing workflows – adding value to those applications, communications capabilities, and companies in the process.
That’s why All About the API at ITEXPO will also offer education on the role APIs are playing in the enterprise. Indeed, companies that provide communications solutions to enterprise and other business customers have found that adding communications capabilities to existing enterprise applications such as customer relationship management systems, for instance, can help businesses yield far greater returns on their investments in these realms.
Other sessions planned for All About the API include Tips for Adding Real-Time Communications to Your App, What App Users Want from APIs, Raising the Bar for SMS – How Cloud Communications APIs are Driving Innovation in Legacy Telco Services, Common Mistakes to Avoid When Building Your API, Consequences of an Unhealthy API – What Businesses Need to Know, Mobile-First Communications APIs and the Mobile Last Mile (News - Alert), Managing the API Lifecycle for Successful Development and Adoption, How to Turbocharge Your API Strategy with SDKs, and How WebRTC Will Change Everything.
“Today's mobile-first, app-centric world has created a thirst for instant communications – it's no longer enough to be able to move to separate communications applications,” notes Erik Linask, TMC’s (News - Alert) group editorial director. “Instead, app users need to be able to interact with their various communities of co-users instantly, which has created an embedded communications revolution made possible by communications APIs. That's what we'll be discussing at All About the API, Comms Edition.”
Edited by Alicia Young
