Cost of Versioning and API or Service in the Data Economy
The Data Economy is booming, and much is being written about Software “eating the world”. many companies however, have not formalized a strategy on Developing and Versioning their API’s. In a recent Forbes article “Collaborate to Grow Says Deloitte Global CEO Barry Salzberg” MIT Sloan graduates Jaime Contreras and Tal Snir are quoted as saying “the peer-to-peer exchange of goods and services – is being called the next big trend in social commerce, and represents what some analysts say is a potential $110 billion market.” Last month, Information week did as entire special issue on the “Age Of The API“, the enablers of the Data Economy.
This exponential growth in API’s is however creating significant versioning concerns and many organizations are beginning to consider their strategy for API versioning as their current strategies become insupportable. For example, the business needs a REST version of an existing SOAP service for mobile access. Should the migrate the entire service and all the client Consumers of the service to a new REST API and end of life the existing SOAP service? Or perhaps develop new API and leave the SOAP service in place? Whatever the reason is for the change, is the best strategy to create new, update the existing, replace the existing or do something else? How many of these changes can they manage in a given period of time and what are the costs? Read More