API Driven Applications - An ecosystem architecture

Today people are connected to information sources with various disparate means. PC is the least in use. From powerful mobile devices, smart televisions, wearable electronics and other ubiquitous computing equipments the entire generation is wired to one another, creating and consuming information. Today if a business wants to reach a market segment; taking the business online is not good enough. It has to innovate on how to reach customers with dozens of available streams. Simply creating a modern e-commerce portal will bring almost no revenue, the business has to innovate on creating an ecosystem around the consumer delivering value.

For this reason the developer community is now increasingly focussing on the API design and architecture practices as opposed to application design and development. Applications are now derived by APIs and now widely exists as thin but rich layers of user interfaces. API first approach have paid well when it comes to creating multiple information streams to deliver and acquire information. Today a successful business model means not only selling the product to the customer but understanding the customer and API driven design supports this business perception.

On the other hand consumer today are far more computer literate than before; they are concerned about online identity, privacy and secure conversation. Application developers need to focus on federated identity, privacy policies and establishing trusted secure communications and sharing these mechanisms with the users by building the trust as well as making the user experience seamless. This talk will mainly focus on the aforesaid aspects of API driven application design and development. Nuwan will discuss and demonstrate key elements of API driven application ecosystem.