API Integration in 2021 and a Look at Insights from 2020

Is GraphQL the path forward? 

How are “tried and true” enterprises pivoting to meet the connectivity demands of corporate customers? 

And how is anyone supposed to build repeatable integrations that won’t leave you stuck in a constant rut of endpoint maintenance?

For the past five years at Cloud Elements, we’ve sought insights from developers, product managers, and other technical team members involved in API development, integration, and management to answer the above questions and identify trends in the API integration industry.

Want to know what to expect from next year's report? Below are some excerpts from the 2020 edition that you might find interesting.

On GraphQL

"Production use cases from enterprises, governments, and startups are already in place, and new tooling continues to evolve and diversify. As an API technology, GraphQL is finding its place in the broader API market landscape and has the potential to strengthen adoption by leveraging two other API sectors: Serverless and the Internet of Things..

One of the key benefits of GraphQL - the ability to create a data abstraction layer that can combine multiple sources through a single gateway and endpoint - will garner growing interest from industry sectors that have complex data supply chains.

Data science, healthcare, and city services will be drawn to GraphQL in 2020 in the same way that publishing, social media, and e-commerce have been to date.

GraphQL has quickly established itself as a valid option for businesses and developers making choices around how to create and manage their API strategy. Across the sector, the biggest gap is a matrix decision tool that allows API creators to assess each type of API architecture option and weigh the best cases each is suited to implementing...

Ultimately, in 2020 GraphQL's evolution is still in its infancy, but with the rapid interest from developers and the quick iteration and availability of tooling, there are strong signs that GraphQL is becoming a legitimate option for how APIs are created and managed, offering significant performance and developer experience benefits."

In last year’s survey responses, 39.5% of participants said they thought GraphQL would become the predominant API style for their organization at some point.

Meanwhile, if you want to read more about GraphQL, check out this tweet-storm from Kurt Kemple at Apollo GraphQL where he describes GraphQL using a grocery shopping analogy.

There are some great replies to read, as well.

On Data Standards

"Based on research collected for this report and data points from other industries, the tide is starting to turn toward data standards. Perhaps the most obvious example of this shift is the growing adoption of and results delivered through Schema.org. We can see implementations of this in things like search and email every day, and it's driving new user experiences in many ways...

If businesses want the right kind of data to underpin advanced business processes or to create multi-dimensional views of data objects, data-centric integration must be pursued as a strategic function that aligns with business objectives.

Unfortunately, many enterprises today have become bogged down with legacy integration platforms while also overwhelmed with a growing number of applications. Data-centric integration turns the focus of application integration toward the data upon which organizations rely, rather than "point-to-point" application integration patterns that dominate the integration landscape today. With 1,500+ cloud services in use by the average enterprise today, legacy integration patterns simply can't scale."

How pressing is data standardization, really? Last year’s survey found that a whopping 89.6% of respondents felt the industry should invest in and adopt more data standards. Whether the trend continues upwards is TBD.