Mobile, Cloud and developer influence drive enterprise need for APIs

Layer 7 Technologies, a CA Technologies company and a provider of Application Programming Interface (API) management and mobilization tools for the open enterprise, has released the results of a survey focused on the key enterprise concerns that are driving the adoption of API management solutions.

Of the 140 enterprise IT professionals polled in May, more than 43 percent of respondents reported that their organization currently has an API program in place, while 27 percent said a program will be launched within the next year. Respondents to the survey overwhelmingly pointed to a broad range of key business goals driving the growing need for API programs, including:
• Mobility programs (71.9 percent);
• Partner connectivity (69.1 percent);
• Cloud integration (67.6 percent);
• Enabling internal developers (66.9 percent); and
• Fostering external developer ecosystems (55.4 percent)

“Enterprises are increasingly recognizing APIs as a cornerstone of the modern open hybrid enterprise,” said Dimitri Sirota, senior vice president, Security, CA Technologies and co-founder of Layer 7. “For an organization to be successful, it must have a strategy to deploy and manage the APIs that will enable it to secure and leverage data, empower a mobilized workforce and engage with the developers driving the app economy.”

Respondents indicated that mobile performance optimization, developer enablement and data analytics were the three most important features needed in an API management solution, and nearly half of those polled said data security and privacy were their biggest security considerations. Despite the steady growth of cloud-based solutions, more than half (55.1 percent) still prefer an on-premise solution, while hybrid deployments (cloud with on-premise) were also popular (42.8 percent).