Changing customer needs, economic shift, and industry trends are reshaping the way organizations utilize APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to grow their businesses and remain competitive. 2021 has been a big year for APIs. Market and industry trends were the biggest contributors to API growth. Open-banking, micro insurance, interoperability, etc. powered via APIs have played a significant role in driving the API economy.

API platform dominates the digital industry with technology analysts expecting API investments to increase by 37% in 2022. The expected surge is underscored by the fact that organizations globally spent an estimated $1.2 trillion on digital transformation in 2019 and 2020. As technology continues to become an important part of our personal and professional lives, APIs will become an imperative.

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APIs are the key component in ensuring all new services and their processes are stitched together. This evolution will continue well into 2022 and beyond. As we move ahead in 2022, here are 5 trends shaping the future of APIs.

1. API-driven modernization : APIs are powering technology modernization across industries. Legacy infrastructure can become a liability in today’s digital and API-led approach. But we are witnessing an increase in the number of organizations using APIs and API platforms to replace and improve the capabilities of their legacy systems.

2. Microservices : Microservices have grown tremendously over the past years. Orchestrating using container environments have become quite common. As more organizations adopt these technologies, they will need API management platforms that can both deploy in a container environment and integrate with various enterprise tools. Organizations wishing to succeed with microservices, and APIs will need major interoperability gains across platforms.

3. API-driven strategy : An API-driven approach to application architecture means that everything is built with API integration and consumption at the core. According to Postman research, 67% of respondents reported adopting an API-driven strategy in 2021 from 63% the year before. This indicates that more and more organizations are embracing the API-driven approach. By applying an API-first approach to smaller initiatives, organizations can enable themselves to gradually adapt to a full-scale API product mindset.

4. Low-Code and No-Code API Architecture : Today, cloud providers, software-as-a-service models, and mainstream technology players are transforming their products and enhancing their efficiency by reducing the amount of coding required. Similarly, a key component in gaining efficiency to create and maintain a large pool of APIs is leveraging technology with low-code or no-code platforms. Low-code platforms offer low-code features to create APIs with little customization. With limited developer resources, low-code and no-code tools allow incumbent developers to create and manage APIs without any additional technical expertise or programming knowledge. As API adoption continues to accelerate across industries, low-code, no-code features will become increasingly important in 2022.

5. APIs in AI and ML Technologies : APIs are shaping to be very prominent in the AI/ML industry since it helps organizations with the availability of AI/ML via consumable APIs. These include services such as predictive analytics, chatbots, customer-service automation tools, speech recognition, and so on. APIs also help AI/ML-driven processes with seamless data flow and robust information security. With the rise in AI/ML trends, we will witness a multi-fold increase in API adoption and consumption in 2022.

Conclusion

New business models, digital initiatives, low-code/no-code platforms, new marketplaces, and as-a-service value propositions all draw the same conclusion: more APIs! This decade has all the hallmarks to become the ‘decade of the API’ with indicators suggesting that the API market will continue to grow, especially with increase in demands by organizations due to the pandemic. APIs will soon drive internal DevOps, automation, and AI initiatives across the organization and will become the key driver of technology adoption in the era of digital transformation.

As written by Neelesh Kripalani, Chief Technology Officer at Clover Infotech, and published in Digital Terminal