The principles of cloud computing might be decades old, but it wasn't until 2006, when Amazon entered the cloud market, that the modern cloud era really began. Like the processor virtualization market a decade earlier, cost, benefit and flexibility are providing the basis for an ever-increasing pace of enterprise cloud adoption.
Cloud is ultimately about three things:
- Building cloud native applications that scale
- Moving and modernizing existing applications
- Repartitioning your enterprise architecture flexibly between public and private clouds and operating all clouds as one
- But if you're not thinking about APIs as you embark upon your cloud journey, you're thinking wrong.
Build for the cloud
Cloud is about self-service: It's about your developers (and you) not standing in line for resources. How is self service delivered? APIs, of course. IaaS APIs, PaaS APIs, and service APIs.
Cloud is about agility: It's about your developers (and you) not standing in line because of dependencies on other teams. How is this independence delivered? APIs, of course. Microservices APIs.
Cloud is about scale: It's about your application breaking free from the limits of a single VM. How is this liberation achieved? APIs, of course. PaaS APIs.
Cloud is about a set of services: It's about services that you consume so that you can focus on your value-add. How are those services delivered to you? APIs, of course. Others make their services friendly through consumption-centric APIs.
Cloud is about serverless: It's about writing code and letting the cloud run it. How is the code run? APIs, of course. You build your logic, provide an API to it, and enable it to be used by everyone else.
Move to the cloud
Cloud is about moving key applications: It's about apps and workloads that seamlessly move to the cloud and can be modernized easily. How do you move applications? APIs, of course. You wrap your key application with APIs and route calls transparently to the right location.
Cloud is about modernization: It's about growing your business through new digital use cases. How is this modernization achieved? APIs, of course. You make your services developer-friendly through consumption-centric APIs.
Cloud is about no lock-in: It's about enabling applications to move to the best provider. How do you enable this optionality? APIs, of course. Applications and key components powered by APIs enable free movement between clouds.
Operate all your cloud assets uniformly
Cloud is about security: It's about ensuring that your applications, irrespective of location, are more secure than ever. How do you achieve this security? APIs, of course. When APIs power your key applications, your applications are more secure, because your security architects can see, manage, and control all of them without compromising the agility of your developers.
Cloud is about cost: It's about applications that deliver value getting more resources. It's Darwinism in your application landscape. How do measure value? APIs, of course. Analytics on APIs helps you understand the usage and decide which location and resources make sense for each particular application.
Cloud is about operations: It's about applications residing wherever they do, but operating as one. How do you operate everything as one? APIs, of course. APIs that manage the applications, the infrastructure, the network, the services.
Don't think of cloud with one eye shut
Cloud is central to your business. But why handicap yourself? Think APIs in the same breath as thinking cloud.