Insights

WSO2 Shows How Leveraging API Technology can Enhance Your Business

Oct 17, 2019

An Industry Perspective: Architecting the Future of Telecom with APIs

As competition in the telecom marketplace intensifies, service providers are increasingly challenged to develop solutions that lower barriers of adoption, grow their target market and generate profitable revenue. Mifan Careem, Vice President of Solutions Architecture at WSO2, joined the Toll-Free User Summit for An Industry Perspective: Architecting the Future of Telecom with APIs to discuss how leveraging APIs can help expand and enhance your organization’s service offerings.

After architecting APIs for more than 300 customers, Mifan noted that to successfully drive digital transformation, we must first begin with a mindset transformation. This includes reviewing your company’s core competencies and ensuring that software development is at the top of that list. This allows you to think more strategically about API implementation and the internal assets you already possess. As Mifan observed, whether directly or indirectly, a company’s technology, assets and data are all things that can be marketed and monetized. In this way, APIs have the ability to serve as an encapsulation of a company’s intellectual property.

Building a sustainable API-driven platform is not simply a “build it and they will come,” scenario, however. Rather, you must establish a business-level API mission that is tied to your technology strategy. Likewise, you must be able to deliver top-notch solutions to consumers while engaging and empowering the talent that will develop these solutions. As consumers become more savvy and top developers more in demand, organizations are getting creative with how to capture the best and brightest producers, including offering incentives and hosting competitive hackathons.

While building an API-driven platform is an investment in both time and money, when developed smartly, APIs can easily deliver dividends – both financially and schedule-wise. Mifan estimated that while building a straightforward (yet comprehensive) API-driven platform may take anywhere from six to eight months, one benefit of platforms built on APIs is that they can be developed incrementally.

When built successfully, APIs can provide a huge range of benefits that positively advance your company and drive success for external stakeholders and the greater industry. Whether or not we like it, technology and business landscapes are changing. In order to remain competitive, companies need to stay ahead of the curve by leveraging APIs when updating current solutions and developing new platforms.