API Days Madrid 2019 – Trend Topics and Presentations

The APIDays Madrid 2019, occurred on April 26 at Google for Startups Campus, and we from Sensedia were there to make a presentation and follow-up the experiences of companies in the region, in addition to seeing what the most important topics of the event be were going to be.  Here, I will share what drew our attention most in the event. We did not manage to participate in the workshops, for a lack of time. They had very interesting contents and the organization of the event was also very good. We really enjoyed participating in the event and talking with the participants.

‍ChatsThe AsyncAPI specification – Francisco Méndez Vilas, AsyncAPIs Initiative

‍The first talk we had was with Fran Méndez Vilas (@fmvilas) on AsyncAPI Initiative, a very interesting specification for message-based systems (Human-Machine readable, with application for event-driven microservices, Streaming APIs, IoT APIs ...), the community is moving fast and we from Sensedia will be accompanying!

Break the monolith, evolve your CMS using it as Headless with APIs - Jesús Cuesta Arza, AtSistemas

‍The second talk, with Jesús Cuesta Arza (@dejesuscuesta), of atSistemas, discussed the APIs in the headless CMS (WordPress, Liferay ...), an important topic to have flexibility, control and security for the contents that today need to be very quickly created and published by different channels, platforms and devices.

Using the CMS headless APIs, integrating it with other systems and managed by a complete API Management platform, allows visualizing metrics in a centralized way, applying security and optimization mechanisms, monitoring problems and making quick troubleshooting, among other advantages.

Open Banking: the BBVA experience – David Ramos Lehnhoff, BBVA

‍David Ramos Lehnhoff (@davidramosleh), from BBVA, said that the business possibilities with the APIs are greater than what is required by PSD2, as well as the importance of a good Dev Portal to promote the use of APIs, a macro view of their tech stack, safe care, bank -as-a-service opportunities and what they are doing with fintechs, problems and preheating of lambdas, and the various challenges with the API governance.

I don’t care about these APIs – Victor Cuervo, SegurCaixa Adeslas

‍Víctor Cuervo (@victor_cuervo), from SegurCaixa Adeslas, made a very funny presentation with a very important theme (more difficult than it seems): articulating the business strategy for APIs and API management, monitor business metrics, as well as the importance of team training, security and governance, which is aligned with Sensedia's positioning, which offers more than an API platform with Adaptive Governance module and Business Analytics, it also helps its clients in their APIs/Microservices strategies with consultancy and Customer Success team, and according to the new report from Forrester, our current offering is THE BEST around!

GraphQL, REST or gRPC, who wins this game? – Rafael Rocha, Sensedia

‍In turn, Rafael Rocha, from Sensedia, explained the characteristics of the GraphQL, gRPC and REST standards and presented a suggestion of an eligibility matrix to create Experience APIs, Open APIs and internal APIs, selecting the best standards according to the criteria for each case of use, besides presenting the difference of an API Gateway for a Full Lifecycle API management platform with important functions like Advanced Analytics, Wizard for creating APIs, mechanisms of transformation/optimization and security, Dev Portal for documentation and dev commitment, Adaptive Governance, Monetization, among other resources for the exhibition and management of these APIs.

Journey towards the construction of an open API platform – Álvaro Navarro, Amadeus

‍Alvaro Navarro (@alnacle), from Amadeus, presented the path of its APIs strategy, actions to devs commitment and feedback, care with security and its governance process (for API designers and API consumers), serverless API deployment flow <1min, rewards for API beta testers... all very interesting!

In addition, I found the Amadeus Dev Marketing excellent, at #apidaysmadrid19 to promote the use of their APIs by developers

Trend Topics

‍The most important topics among the chats were:– Governance

‍In almost all the talks, the speakers highlighted the difficulties and the importance of the governance of the APIs program such as versioning, permissions, workflows, dependencies, complexity management, style check, testing/automation, documentation, orchestration of different platforms and tools, amongst other aspects.

Security

‍The APIs are the doors for new businesses, but also for vulnerabilities and threats. How to guarantee that a design and consumption of APIs in a protected and proven manner, without prejudice to agility and time-to-market.‍

Devs’ commitments

‍It is not enough to have good APIs if nobody uses them, or they do not find them, or it is difficult to access the documentation and test them. It is essential to take actions to stimulate the commitment of the devs to use the APIs and improve the experience and the API value use, even if they are only internal APIs.‍

AsyncAPI

‍The expansion of demands for real-time data and coordinated actions in ecosystems of companies and devices are driving growth of solutions for Event-Driven Architectures (EDA). The AsyncAPI specification is moving fast to make it easier for projects with event-based APIs to have documentation, code generation, discovery, automation, management and governance.‍

Importance of an API strategy aimed at Business and Business Analytics

‍APIs can bring real value to the business, such as the composition of new products, reach of new digital channels, monetization of data and services, improvement of user experience, act on new business models, among other possibilities. The APIs program must be aligned with the company's strategy, and consider business aspects (promotion, monetization, monitoring of business metrics and feedbacks, etc.) to extract the maximum value from the API program.These topics are in accordance with the strategic vision of Sensedia for its projects and developments in its API platform:

• Sensedia API Platform launched the new module for Adaptive Governance in April/2019.

• We have a dedicated team to address OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities and we offer PCI compliant environments.

• For the devs’ commitments, in addition to a dev portal (complete, customizable and integrated to the Sensedia API platform), we also offer a DX service (Dev Experience), with a dedicated team to assist and improve the dev experience for our customer’s API use.

• In June, you will have the launch of the Event Hub module.

• The business strategy with the APIs is of a central importance for Sensedia, which offers its clients specialized consultancy to the different market sectors (Finance, Retail, Telecom, Health etc.) and to the Customer Success team.

API Experience – APIX 2019

‍To discuss these trends and discover new paths for business with APIs, Sensedia makes every year its API Experience event (APIX), which this year will be held on June 5th and 6th, at World Trade Center, São Paulo, Brazil.

The event will have about 900 participants, 50 speakers, simultaneous conferences (with realtime translation into Portuguese-Spanish-English) of strategic focus/business and technological focus, plus basic and advanced hands-on workshops with experts from Sensedia.