What are APIs, why do you keep hearing about them and why do you need them?

API is one of those terms that people vaguely understand but skip over because it sounds complex, but in fact APIs are surprisingly straightforward and very useful

The chances are, if you've spent any time working in or with a technology company, then you'll have heard the term API. It's one of those terms that people vaguely understand but may skip over because it sounds complex and like something that mainly developers know about.

In fact, an API, or application programming interface, is surprisingly straightforward and very useful. Like its end-user equivalent the GUI (graphical user interface), it's really just a way of controlling programs. The difference is that, while a GUI controls how a user interacts with a program, an API is concerned with how programs work together independently.

Simply put; APIs create rule sets that allow applications to "talk" to one another. Every time data moves between two programs or applications, APIs are responsible.

To use a basic, everyday example, when someone types Facebook's address into their browser, that sends a request to Facebook's remote server. That browser then interprets the response code it receives and displays the page. To the browser, Facebook's server is an API; in reality the part of its server that receives requests and sends responses.

APIs in business innovation

Given the ubiquity of APIs in our online interactions, it's hardly surprising that the term continually crops up, even outside of technical circles. But there's another reason for this.

For businesses, APIs represent the same freedom from time consuming development and onerous contractual obligations as Software as a Service (SaaS). Like on-demand solutions, APIs allow software developers to build apps that can ‘contract out' certain responsibilities to remote software that is better designed for the task. This means they don't have to build a single core application that tries to do everything.

See also: What is an API?

APIs let even moderately skilled users leverage powerful functions across programs. For example, APIs are what integrate Google Maps results into Yelp searches, allowing users to find both restaurant reviews and locations. They do this by simplifying the number and type of functions users can carry out in specific code by clearly defining exactly how programs will interact with other software in any given situation. They dictate what developers can do, what they can access, and how they can integrate specific web services or resources into their apps.

APIs in communications

One area where increasingly sophisticated APIs are playing a central role is in communications. With home and remote working vastly increased, companies are ramping up IT spending on unified communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) along with reliable video conferencing, collaboration and voice technology solutions. The sheer number of technology solutions currently on the market can make this a daunting task.

Given the pace of change and the cost involved, it seldom makes sense for companies to develop tools from scratch to enable this functionality. With their advanced features and relative ease of implementation, communications APIs are a far more effective way of doing it.

By using APIs, click-to-call, video calling, automated SMS messaging, and other useful features can quickly be added and integrated to provide personalised and agile customer service wherever the customer is. This is because they make it easier to design customer-facing tools that customers actually want.

Multi-channel message delivery can also be simplified using APIs. By automatically prioritising the sending of messages on the channels that customers are engaged with, as well as gathering insights, businesses can not only automate but also gain intelligence on their customers' preferences.

WhatsApp, for example, is widely used by consumers as a conversational channel and is extremely effective in driving customer engagement. This trend has resulted in Vonage seeing a significant increase in the implementation of its Messages API which enables companies to reach customers via multiple channels, including WhatsApp, allowing for automation and virtual assistance but also human escalation, as needed.

In a wider context, communications platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) APIs can enable integration with any number of powerful third-party communications services. This allows the creation of wholly new communications experiences that "off-the-shelf" applications just can't support, enabling businesses to react quickly to customer needs they may not have anticipated.

One such simple innovation in this area is Number Programmability, which allows callers to automatically schedule call-back times to suit all parties. This was achieved by building a simple paging application to check busy call recipients' Google Calendar for available times.

Having both a cloud communications application's native features and the option to leverage CPaaS APIs allows developers to build workflows that deliver the most value to the business and its customers. That can be a unique use case that boosts productivity or a custom application that alleviates a whole set of customer pain points.

APIs and Web 3.0

The Web continues to evolve rapidly, and APIs - sometimes positioned as the ‘pipelines' for data - are likely to play an ever-more central role in this evolution. We are currently in the third wave, known as Web 3.0, which is all about more engaging web experiences, with seamless integration of humans and machines and a distributed web architecture.

As the semantic web is realised through innovations in AI and machine learning and the Internet of Things (IoT) makes us more and more connected, the traditional API is evolving too. The ‘request-response' pattern outlined at the start of this article is giving way to a hyper-interactive web application in which humans, and machines collaborate in real-time. In this ‘event-driven' approach, APIs themselves are involved in the interaction.

In other words, APIs that are increasingly intelligent and are capable of making decisions on behalf of the user, as well as interacting with the end-user, are enabling a new dimension of user/developer experience.

There's an API for that

The origin of the phrase ‘API Economy' is unclear but much has been written about it over the past decade. Its ultimate goal, according to TechTarget is "to facilitate the creation of user-focused apps that support line-of-business goals and improve workforce throughout".

In fact, given that APIs are now becoming increasingly sophisticated and as ubiquitous as the app, there is now a move by some developers towards building and hosting APIs, rather than building the apps themselves.

It seems that the popular idea that there's an app for everything has been superseded. Perhaps the new mantra for the 2020s should be there's an API for everything.

Omar Javaid is president, Vonage API Platform, Vonage