Growth of APIs - 1
THE STATE OF
API INTEGRATION
REPORT
2017
Growth of APIs - 2
Happy Integrating.
Mark Geene
CEO - Cloud Elements
@mgeene
THERE HAS BEEN AN
EXPONENTIAL PROLIFERATION OF APIs
THROUGHOUT THE YEARS.
Our vision at Cloud Elements is to make it faster and easier for developers to connect and work with any API. Each new service or
application is an island of data, causing developers to be overrun with new APIs, resources and information. And with each new API,
developers are challenged with determining how it works and what value writing to the API brings.

This report helps to address the proliferation of APIs by providing trends, insights on ease of integration, data on where the industry is
strong, and where it is going next.

DATA COLLECTION METHODOLOGY
The data presented here had been collected and analyzed between September 2016 to March 2017, and comes from Cloud
Elements API Integration platform. Over 107 public endpoints, 58 beta endpoints, 28,000 individual instances and 1.6 Billion+ API
Calls were surveyed to extract the following results. In addition to the Cloud Elements platform, complementary research provided by
ProgrammableWeb API Directory 'Growth in Web APIs Since 2005', the Datanyze Market Share Report of 2016, and SmartBear State
of API Report 2016. Industry expert contributors include Ross Garrett, Sr. Director Product Marketing at Cloud Elements and Kin
Lane, The API Evangelist. It will help all developers navigate the recent explosion of APIs and the implications of API integrations to
work more efficiently in 2017 and beyond.

We'll cover:


1. The Growth of API Integration 2. API Integrations | Compare and Contrast 3. Current Scorecard of API Integration
Word F m Our CEO
word from our ceo
Growth of APIs - 3
MEET THE
CONTRIBUTORS
Meet The Contributor
KIN LANE
API Evangelist
I am the API Evangelist. Not in
the sense that I'm evangelizing
a single API to you--In the
sense that APIs are important
for everyone to be aware of. I'm paying attention to not
just the technical, but the business and politics of the
web API movement. I share my insights by blogging on
the business of APIs at apievangelist.com, politics of
APIs at apivoice.com and you can find more information
about me at kinlane.com.
ROSS GARRETT
At Cloud Elements
Ross Garrett is the Head of
Product Marketing at Cloud
Elements - responsible for
market strategy, product
positioning and evangelism. He is a well-known
speaker at developer events and other industry
conferences. Ross has over 10 years of product and
marketing leadership experience in the integration
space, most recently at Push Technology and
previously with Axway, CA and Layer 7.
MARK GEENE
CEO At Cloud Elements
Mark Geene, co-founder &
CEO of Cloud Elements,
is recognized as a leading
visionary for unifying the
world's APIs by defining the first API Integration
platform. This revolution of API integration is the next
frontier in API Management as developers address
the challenge of consuming millions of disparate
private and public APIs. In addition, to being a pioneer
in the API world, Mark is a well-recognized leader
in applying the Lean Startup methodology and has
earned awards from Outside Magazine, Apex, Stevie,
and Denver Gazelle for his outstanding work.
Growth of APIs - 4
table of contents
WORD FROM OUR CEO
MEET THE CONTRIBUTORS
03
COMPARE AND CONTRAST
20 Authentication
22 Metadata Discovey
24 Bulk
26 Events and Synchronization
27 Webhooks
01
INTRODUCTION
06 The State of API Integration
Important Findings
07 A Look Ahead
04
API CALCULATOR
31 CRM Endpoint Scorecards
02
THE GROWTH OF APIS
09 SOAP Isn't Dead Yet
10 Proliferation of Public APIs
11 Demand of Cloud Services by Category
12 Growing Demand of Emerging Category Leaders
05
CLOSING
36 About Cloud Elements
Table of Content
Growth of APIs - 5
INTRODUCTION
Introduction
chapter 1
Growth of APIs - 6
THE STATE OF
API INTEGRATION
API integration is one of the most critical aspects of application development
today. It's not enough that your application exposes a great, developer
friendly API, you often need to integrate the APIs exposed by other
products and services - allowing these differing interfaces to work well
together is fundamental to a reliable application experience for your users.
A good example is data synchronization - where business events need to
be communicated between products and services in a uniform way, even
though each API offers a different integration model or data structure.
This means developers must navigate a sometimes-bewildering set
of features and variations across different APIs, and figure out a way to
consolidate them into one coherent, streamlined data model. With so many
different products and services out there - each with their own APIthis API
integration report aims to highlight the features and typical integrations you
should design for within your applications and APIs.
introduction
Introduction
IMPORTANT FINDINGS
This report takes a look back at the state of API integration in 2016, while providing
guidance for the future. One area that keeps coming up year after year is the balance of
power between SOAP and REST. There is no doubt that REST dominates today, but there's
still a remarkable percentage of SOAP APIs out there that can't be ignored - at least 15%
based on our experience. The report will also take a snapshot across API consumption in
various categories over the past year - looking at this data from an enterprise integration
perspective shows not all APIs available are used equally. The usage across these categories
provides key information about the importance and potential growth of different sectors
of the market.
The report will also examine specifications across different APIs, and how design decisions
made by API product managers can have a significant impact on how easy it is for you to
consume data from these products and services. For example, Webhooks is still a niche
feature amongst the most commonly used APIs, despite the fact that over 80 percent
of developers indicate they prefer using Webhooks over comparable methods. The good
news is that marketing, document storage and e-commerce services are leading the way
here, encouraging others to follow this trend.
...remarkable percentage of SOAP APIs out there that can't be
ignored - at least 15% based on our experience.
Growth of APIs - 7
introduction
A LOOK AHeaD
This report also gives us an opportunity to
look forward to 2017 and the trends that are
set to affect APIs and application integration.
A trend that we've come to expect over
the past few years is around public APIs -
they've become prolific amongst products
and services wanting reach the "long-tail"
of application developers. For 2017, all the
data suggests we'll see another year of record
growth in this segment.
Introduction
Within enterprise integration, a need to bridge application data
from similar types of products (E.g. CRM) is driving significant
growth. This is occurring both within and without corporate
IT - which is impacting the requirements placed on integration
technologies and even the APIs themselves. For example, we see
increased API consumption and data transformation for services in
the CRM, marketing automation, cloud storage and e-commerce
segments. And a growing need to simplify, speedup and automate
common integration workflows - such as creating new CRM
records for a purchases from new customers.
Of course API technologies aren't standing still either. We've
mentioned developer preference for Webhooks to handle
asynchronous eventing between application services, and this is
gaining a place within popular API documentation languages such
as OpenAPI Specification v3.0. Hypermedia is also given a slight
nod within OAS v3.0, with some basic linking capabilities being
described. With adoption of this new specification set to takeoff
during 2017, we can perhaps expect to see a greater understanding
of (and appreciation for) hypermedia flows among API product
managers.
Growth of APIs - 8
GROWTH
OF APIs
chapter 2
Growth of APIs - 9
SOAP ISN'T
DEAD YET

Growth of APIs
83%
REST
vs
SOAP
15%
2%
REST
SOAP
.NET
Growth of APIs - 10
PROLIFERATION
OF PUBLIC APIS
The proliferation of APIs is a leading indicator for the demand of API Integration. According to
ProgrammableWeb, in a matter of 6 years, web API counts increased 758% from 2010 - 2016.
With API Services proliferating at an accelerating pace, new and interesting challenges for developers
continue to arise. Each API is unique, has its own resource definitions, data model schema, error
handling, paging structure and more.
API Management vendors have conditioned us to believe that our APIs are living on their own little
island, and we must self-develop and publish each in order to monetize the results for company's sake.
In reality, apps are increasingly combining your services with APIs purchased from vendors.
Your APIs, in combination with the APIs of SaaS, PaaS, IaaS and IoT services, are building the next
generation of Web, SaaS, Mobile and Internet of Things (IoT). These new composite apps help to
automate workflows among multiple services, based on events and triggers. Citizen Integrators,
comprised of customers, partners and employees, want apps to work with the other cloud services they
use without having to spend hours learning your unique API, and composite APIs make this happen.
Growth of APIs
Source: https://www.programmableweb.com/news/programmableweb-api-directo-
ry-eclipses-17000-api-economy-continues-surge/analysis/2017/03/13
Growth of APIs - 11
Cloud Storage
CRM
Marketing
Finance
eCommerce
Helpdesk
Messaging
Social
Database
Payments
Field Service
Human Capital
ERP
eSignature
Collaboration
Events
ID Management
Monitoring
Screening
DEMAND OF
CLOUD SERVICES
BY CATEGORY
As the demand for integration between cloud categories
increases, the need for accompanying APIs spanning across all
categories of cloud service continues to boom. While the majority
of the demand for APIs fall under the Cloud Storage category, in
mid 2015, the industry saw a spike in demand for CRM API use,
creating the need for APIs across several cloud service categories.
Growth of APIs
Growth of APIs - 12
GROWING DEMAND
OF EMERGING
CATEGORY LEADERS
A growing demand for integration can be measured by emerging
technologies across multiple categories. Most notably we have
seen dramatic growth in demand for finance applications and
helpdesk applications in the latter half of 2016.
Q3
2014
Q3
2015
Q3
2016
Q1
2015
Q1
2016
Q4
2014
Q4
2015
Q4
2016
Q2
2015
Q2
2016
90
60
30
Social
Messaging
Helpdesk
eCommerce
Finance
Marketing
CRM
Cloud Storage
Growth of APIs
Growth of APIs - 13
CLOUD
STORAGE
Growth of APIs
CATEGORY MARKET LEADERS
The percentage to the right represents the Cloud Storage
and Document market share generated by Datanyze.
It is calculated by the number of websites using given
technology divided by the total number of websites
using any of the technologies selected in the left column;
websites limited to the Alexa top 1M.
Integration roadmaps are often prioritized based on
customer demand for integrations to current software
market leaders. A critical aspect of integration design is
to consider who the current market leader is the space
and ensure your application is futureproof for any new
entrants to the market that could soon takeover.
25.2%
14.3%
4.8%
4.3%
2.9%
2.4%
2.4%
1.4%
1.0%
1.0%
0.5%
0.5%
16.2%
21.4%
1.9%
Other
Growth of APIs - 14
CATEGORY MARKET LEADERS
The percentage to the left represents the CRM market share
generated by Datanyze. It is calculated by the number of websites
using given technology divided by the total number of websites using
any of the technologies selected in the left column; websites limited
to the Alexa top 1M.
Integration roadmaps are often prioritized based on customer
demand for integrations to current software market leaders. A critical
aspect of integration design is to consider who the current market
leader is within the space and ensure your application is futureproof
for any new entrants to the market that could soon takeover.
Growth of APIs
CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP
MANAGEMENT (CRM)
32.4%
27.4%
13.1%
10%
4.4%
4.2%
1.7% Sugarcrm
1.1% vtiger
0.9% Pipeline
0.8% Nanorep
0.8% Insightly
0.7% NeonCRM
0.6% Telligent
0.6% Bloomerang
0.5% Higher Logic
0.2% Jive
0.2% Inbenta
Other
Growth of APIs - 15
MARKETING
AUTOMATION
Growth of APIs
CATEGORY MARKET LEADERS
The percentage to the right represents the Marketing
market share generated by Datanyze. It is calculated
by the number of websites using given technology
divided by the total number of websites using any of the
technologies selected in the left column; websites limited
to the Alexa top 1M.
Integration roadmaps are often prioritized based on
customer demand for integrations to current software
market leaders. A critical aspect of integration design is
to consider who the current market leader is within the
space and ensure your application is futureproof for any
new entrants to the market that could soon takeover.
24.7%
21.9%
8.4%
6.7%
5.4% 3.5%
3.1%
2.8%
2.3%
2.4%
3%
2% RD Station
1.5% SALESmangago
1.3% IBM Silverpop
1.2% ClickDimensions
1.1% Uberflip
0.7% IBM Unica
0.6% Orange Soda
0.5% Mautic
0.5% BounceExchange
0.4% Hatchbuck
0.3% LeadFormix (CallidusCloud)

Leadsius

Net-Results

MyGuestlist
0.3% ProspectEye

StayWell

Selligent

LeadSquared

Greenrope

Reach Local

Antevenio

Optify

SalesFUSION

Jumplead

Right On Interactive

Invite Referrals
0.2%
Other
Adobe Marketing Cloud
Growth of APIs - 16
Growth of APIs
FINANCE &
ECOMMERCE
36.7%
8.2%
6.7%
5.8%
5.6%
3.9%
3%
2.8%
2.3% 1.4%
1.4%
1.3%
1.2%
1.1%
2.5%
1% Ecwid
1% WooCommerce 2.3
0.9% ZenCart
0.8% BigCartel
0.8% WP eCommerce
0.6% SquareSpace eCommerce
0.6% Xt-commerce
0.6% WooCommerce 2.2
0.6% WooCommerce 2.1
0.6% WooCommerce 2.0
0.5% Yahoo Store
0.4% Epages
0.3% 3D cart

NopCommerce

Gumroad
0.2% Shopware

Gambio

Prom.ua

X-Cart

CS Cart

ScanNet
0.1%
Magento 2
MyCommerce
Other
InSales
EKM Powershop
SEOShop
Magento Enterprise
Intershop
1shoppingcart
JTL-Shop 3
CATEGORY MARKET LEADERS
The percentage to the left represents the finance market
share generated by Datanyze. It is calculated by the
number of websites using given technology divided by the
total number of websites using any of the technologies
selected in the left column; websites limited to the Alexa
top 1M.
Integration roadmaps are often prioritized based on
customer demand for integrations to current software
market leaders. A critical aspect of integration design is to
consider who the current market leader is within the space
and ensure your application is futureproof for any new
entrants to the market that could soon takeover.
Growth of APIs - 17
API INTEGRATIONS
COMPARE
AND
CONTRAST
API Integration | Compare and C ntrast
chapter 3
Growth of APIs - 18
Kin Lane
API Evangelist
Cloud Elements has their finger on the pulse of the API sector in their report, highlighting the API growth in the areas that matter
most to businesses today, but also by identifying the biggest challenges we face in ensuring APIs continue to drive the same growth
we've enjoyed over the last decade. This is what I do as the API Evangelist, focus on what has been driving the growth, but highlight
the deficiencies across the sector that might be holding things back, and in the way of seeing the scale we expect of the API economy.

With the growth in the number of public APIs, and resulting amount of valuable digital resources being made available online,
standardizing how we secure access to these resources is growing more important each day. Identity, authentication and access
management will continue to be the biggest challenge we all face, and be the number one area that companies will need to be
investing in they expect to achieve success in their API journey.

Discovery is another area of the API lifecycle that will continue to plague API providers, consumers, and the businesses and people
they are serving in coming years. With the growing number of both public and private APIs, we need to be investing in crafting,
storing, and sharing of metadata describing our APIs, as well as the operations surrounding them--without discovery, we won't
continue to see the growth we've enjoyed in the space over the last decade.

As this State of API Integrations Report highlights, the strong areas of growth have been in the most critical areas of doing business
online today. The deployment and availability and the management of these resources is just the beginning. We need to continue
orchestrating, synchronizing, and ensuring these resources are where we need them, when we need, them, across the growing
number of cloud platforms we are depending on to make our businesses continue to operate in today's fast-paced digital environment.

Cloud Elements' State of API Integrations Report provides us with a good look at the growth in the API space, but I support it because
it gives an honest look at the hard work we still have ahead of us. It can be easy to get excited about the growth we've made in the
last decade with new areas like cloud computing, social, and critical business areas like storage, CRM, marketing, and finance, but the
real opportunities lie ahead once we invest more in authentication, discovery, bulk operations, and making sure our resources are
where they need to be, when it matters to our business.


A Note from the Expert
A NOTE FROM
the Expert
Growth of APIs - 19
THE BIGGEST
CHALLENGES IN API
TECHNOLOGY THAT
NEED TO BE SOLVED...
API integration technology, best practices, and lessons learned
have come a long way, but there are still many obstacles that
stand in the way of developers and organizations getting the
most out of the API Economy, or areas where API providers
can improve the developer experience.
API Integration | Compare and C ntrast
From the research provided by SmartBear in their State of APIs Report 2016,
thirty-nine percent of enterprises want easier integration between the tools they use,
and they wanted it yesterday. These companies have more than 1,031 internal cloud
services, so getting every app to work together is a major need.
API Integrations
compare and contrast
41%
39%
25%
22%
22%
17%
11%
9%
1%
Security
Easier Integration between tools
Standardization
Scalability
Composability/Muli-purpose re-use
Authentication
Discoverability
Versioning
Other
Growth of APIs - 20
API technologies also continue to evolve -
both in terms of standards and best practice. For example, a move
toward event-driven integration models has demonstrated a surge
in the support for and use of Webhooks. Just publishing or writing
to an API is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of integration.
Developers all too often are left to deal with various aspects of API
complexity themselves, such as authentication and authorization,
metadata discovery, bulk support, and event synchronization.
By addressing these four challenges that cause
friction around API integration, enterprises, app
providers and developers can take advantage of the
efficiency and opportunity offered by a seamless,
fully connected application ecosystem.
API Integrations
compare and contrast
2012
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
API Integration | Compare and C ntrast
Growth of APIs - 21
API Integrations
compare and contrast
AUTHENTICATION IS THE KEY
Authentication and authorization are fundamental to exposing data and services via APIs, providing
not only simple authentication, but also identity based access control. This lets the API provider
know which client is connecting and what features or data they have access to.
41%
33%
17%
8%
OAUTH2
API KEY
CUSTOM
BASIC
OAUTH1
API Integration | Compare and C ntrast
TYPES OF AUTH
With so much concern today around data security, many application providers are moving away
from simple single-factor authentication methods and requiring an additional step to verify the
identity of the client. This often means obtaining and submitting an additional code after the simple
username and password have been accepted.
Currently the market is moving quickly to multi-factor and delegated auth mechanisms based on
OAuth, but there are still many APIs out there today relying on Basic Auth (17 percent), API Keys (1
percent) or some custom implementation of API Key & Secret (33 percent).
Looking more closely at OAuth usage, our statistics show that the unloved and
complicated OAuth 1.0 (and 1.0a)
is used by only 8 percent of providers today
compared with the more ubiquitous OAuth 2.0 at over 41 percent.
1%
Growth of APIs - 22
API Integration | Compare and C ntrast
SUPPORT FOR OAUTH
The preference for OAuth is well placed. This mechanism is token-based and far more secure than
relying only on usernames and passwords which can be easily shared or spoofed. Access tokens can
be time-bounded, or have other criteria (such as location) taken into account, meaning access can
be easily revoked or challenged if such criteria are not met.
In addition, OAuth 2.0 allows the provider to authorize access to specific API functionality or data
through the use of a feature called "scope". Simply put, an access token is granted the scope to
perform certain actions. For example, some clients may only be granted read-only access to data via
the API, and this limitation of scope will be associated with their access token. Whereas a different
client may be granted write access also, again configured via token they have been granted.
The level of flexibility offered by OAuth 2.0 makes it the ideal choice for authentication and
authorization of clients.
API Integrations
compare and contrast
CLOUD ELEMENTS SUPPORT
FOR AUTHENTICATION
Cloud Elements has normalized authentication for each
type of the authentication used by the endpoint (e.g., Basic,
OAuth 1.0, OAuth 2.0, WS-Security, API Key, etc). There
are inherent authentication workflow variations depending
on the type of authentication (e.g., basic credentials vs.
OAuth 2.0) but the authentication types are implemented
consistently. Cloud Elements uses a normalized API
token based approach with a user and organization secret,
combined with an Element token associated with the
specific authenticated account of the Element (known as
an "Element Instance" (see term definitions). Switching
endpoints within a Hub is as simple as swapping out a
single element token.
Growth of APIs - 23
85%
15%
NO SUPPORT
SUPPORT
METADATA DISCOVERY
With such proliferation of applications and services used in enterprise or application
development and the sheer number of APIs available today, developers must carry
the burden of understanding the details of each integration. This is becoming
exponentially more time consuming.
In addition, many of the applications in use offer the ability to customize or add
to the data they store for a given entity. For example, in Salesforce it's possible to
customize the fields associated with customer account, contact, or lead, etc.
To help relieve some of the pain, API providers are increasingly offering a capability
known as metadata discovery, so that data models and resource structures can be
accessed and understood programmatically. Taking the Salesforce example again,
the metadata interface makes it possible to simply "ask" what the API can do and
in what format a client should expect to receive responses and data objects. If a
custom field is added in this case, the metadata can be used again to discover this
addition.
In our research we have found that 58% of endpoints support metadata discovery.
One caveat to this research is that it's heavily weighted by the custom data integrations
provided by Cloud Elements. We are bound to support more endpoints that natively support
custom data, therefore more endpoints that natively support metadata discovery. While we
have found that 58% of APIs support discovery, our sense is that industry-wide, this number
is far less.
Native Support of Metadata Discovery
Percentage of API Endpoints that Support Metadata Discovery
Provided by Cloud Elements
API Integrations
compare and contrast
API Integration | Compare and C ntrast
58.9%
32.7%
8.4%
Metadata
Discovery
No Support
Unknown
We assume across the industry <15% of APIs support metadata discovery.
Growth of APIs - 24
METADATA DISCOVERY
Even though the number of API metadata interfaces are increasing, unfortunately
the amount is still relatively small. From our statistics, we see application providers
offering this most commonly in the CRM and Marketing Automation domains -
likely because these platforms often need to handle custom data.
The challenge of metadata discovery shouldn't be confused with some of great
work being done around API documentation languages - such as the Open API
Initiative (formerly known as Swagger). While these efforts have greatly improved
the developer experience and usability for many APIs, and enabled automated
documentation and code-gen, ultimately, developers are still challenged with the
task of reading and learning virtual reams of documentation in order to integrate
with the APIs they need to use.
API product managers should consider how to enable metadata discovery for
their APIs - even where the data model is static. Discovery interfaces provide the
foundation for easy data manipulation - if the structure of a data object can be
made available programmatically, it then becomes possible to transform data from
one source to another. This transformation capability is fundamental to enterprise
integration where a single system is no longer the sole system of record for much
of our data.
API Integrations
compare and contrast
API Integration | Compare and C ntrast
CLOUD ELEMENTS SUPPORT
FOR METADATA DISCOVERY
Discovery Service - Cloud Elements includes a
comprehensive data discovery service that provides
normalized metadata, such as the list of field names and
types. Additional information, if available from an endpoint,
may also be obtained such as: display name, read-only, etc.
If an endpoint doesn't provide discovery service APIs, Cloud
Elements will still provide a minimum set of metadata about
the given resource (e.g., name and type). Cloud Elements
also allows you to discover custom fields (as long as the
values are not empty), by supplying an object ID when a
native discovery service is not available. The Discovery
Service is used along with the Transformation Service to
normalize the responses across endpoints.
Growth of APIs - 25
BULK OPERATIONS
Bulk Upload and Download of data is useful for many applications, and
where available we see users are keen to leverage this functionality. Yet only
42 percent of APIs that Cloud Elements works with actually support bulk. This
is a surprising figure, as almost all data sets in enterprise SaaS applications are
substantial and require some form of bulk operations. Most enterprises struggle
with the amount of data they have in the cloud. With 58 percent of APIs not
offering Bulk support, SaaS applications make it hard to migrate data into and out
of their systems when less than half offer programmatic methods. This situation
acts as a barrier for migration, or synchronization between any new applications
that want to seamlessly work with existing systems of record.
In cases where bulk operations are not available, another factor developers
must deal with is around API rate limits. While necessary protections to maintain
availability and performance for all users, rate limits can make it near impossible
to deal with large volumes of data. For example, a popular e-commerce app limits
applications to two calls per second, with a "leaky bucket" mechanism allowing up
to 40 calls in backlog. This means your application must deal with bulk data at rate
of 2TPS which might result in hours or even days of continuous API calls.
API Integrations
compare and contrast
Ross Garrett
Enterprise users are often dealing with vast data lakes,
that need to be synchronized, analyzed, migrated or even
shared. Application providers must think carefully about the
functionality they offer to handle this scale of data.
API Integration | Compare and C ntrast
Growth of APIs - 26
BULK OPERATIONS
There is no doubt that bulk data operations represent a unique challenge,
computing resources can be tied up for unpredictable amounts of time and data
loading can require complex field mapping. These challenges are worth the effort
however, as many users today will be looking for easy ways to migrate between
products - it may seem counter-intuitive to offer your customers an easy way
to move off your product, but not offering migration capabilities may prevent a
customer from choosing your platform in the first place.
API Integrations
compare and contrast
API Integration | Compare and C ntrast
CLOUD ELEMENTS
SUPPORT FOR BULK
Bulk - Cloud Elements provides the ability to upload and
download data in bulk from an endpoint in a normalized
way. Cloud Elements will leverage the provider bulk
endpoints whenever that is available. When there is no bulk
available from the provider, Cloud Elements will provide a
pseudo bulk service for uploading and downloading data
from the endpoint. For uploads, we will accept a file and
then create objects at the endpoint on a record by record
basis. For downloads, we will execute a search API against
the endpoint, and loop through all results until we have
retrieved all the data. Cloud Elements will store these files
(encrypted) in our platform for a maximum of three days.
We're currently rolling out a Bulk service on an Element by
Element basis.
Let us know if you need Bulk APIs for a given Element by
contacting us at support@cloud-elements.com.
Growth of APIs - 27
EVENTS AND
SYNCHRONIZATION

Business events are really the key piece of data that enterprises,
applications and developers care about. In software terms, there
are many ways of handling events - but webhooks is becoming the
technology of choice amongst API providers and developers.
Eighty percent of developers prefer to use
webhooks over other methods.
Unfortunately, only 29 percent of APIs offer webhooks.
Out of these APIs, 92 percent return JSON data, and 8 percent return SOAP or
XML. Across the categories we profiled, Marketing Automation Software, Cloud
Storage and e-Commerce offered the widest support for webhooks with 44
percent, 43 percent and 36 percent respectively.
API Integrations
compare and contrast
API Integration | Compare and C ntrast
DEVELOPER PREFERENCE
Growth of APIs - 28
THE BENEFITS OF
WEBHOOKS
Webhooks automatically post new event data to a user-defined URL
monitored by the user's integrated applications. When a new event posts
to the URL, the linked app updates to include this new data. The primary
difference between webhooks and polling is that the hooks only update
when there is new information available.
Webhooks work by automatically posting new event data to a user-defined
URL which is monitored by the user's linked applications. Each time a new
event is posted to the URL, the linked applications update to include the new
data. Unlike polling which is successful on less than two percent of requests
(according to research provided by Zapier), webhooks only update when new
information is available. Because of the increased efficiency, over 82 percent
of developers surveyed by Wufoo indicated that they would rather receive
new data via webhooks instead of with polling. Despite this preference, only
29 percent of APIs currently support webhooks.
API Integrations
compare and contrast
API Integration | Compare and C ntrast
71%
29%
Without
Webhooks
Offer
Webhooks
Growth of APIs - 29
EVENT AND SYNCRONIZATION
API Integrations
compare and contrast
API Integration | Compare and C ntrast
CLOUD ELEMENTS
SUPPORT FOR EVENTS
Event - Cloud Elements can be configured to
listen for and notify users of actions/changes
(i.e., Creates, Updates) to endpoint resources in
a normalized way. We leverage webhook events
when available from an endpoint. If webhooks are
not supported, we provide a polling service that
polls for new or modified data at the endpoint.
Whether we use webhooks or polling, we provide
a consistent JSON payload of the action that
occurred to a resource along with the object
name and the object ID. For completeness we
also include the vendor's raw payload of the data
associated with that event. Note that in order to
provide a polling event capability, an endpoint
must provide the ability to search for resource
updates. Polling also has an inherent limitation that
cannot support deleted events.
In most products without webhooks support, API integrations fall back to polling the application
repeatedly, which is extremely wasteful. Approximately 98.5 percent of these polls return no useable
data. Another way to think about that: every 2 out of 100 times, you app's integration will receive no
updated or changed data, when using a polling framework to manage synchronization.
Event-Driven Architecture is certainly not a new methodology, but it's enjoying renewed support in the
world of integration because it reduces coupling between services and provides a far more efficient way
of synchronizing and updating data.
If you have 3,000 applications interested in knowing when a new customer is created in your CRM, and
if you are using traditional REST APIs, you will have 3,000 clients repeatedly asking the CRM platform
"is there a new customer?", and most often getting the answer "no". An event-driven implementation
reverses this integration model, where instead of clients asking if there is new data, the CRM platform
tells each of the 3,000 applications when new data is available.
POLLING RESULTS
98.5% = FAIL
(No Usable Data)
Growth of APIs - 30
API
CALCULATOR
chapter 4
API Calculator
Growth of APIs - 31
INTERACTIVE
CALCULATOR TO
SCORE YOUR API
To wrap things up, we wanted to give our readers a tool, mechanism,
and calculator to gauge how your API currently stacks up against other
APIs - focused on how easy it is for API consumers can integrate with
your service. Here are two APIs we have scored based on the research
and findings from this report. One good and one not so good -- we're
not calling out products or vendors in particular, so we haven't listed the
actual endpoints, but rather offer these examples to further quantify the
current State of API Integration.
API CALCULATOR
API Calculator
YOU CAN USE THE SCORECARD
FOR YOURSELF TO DETERMINE
YOUR SCORE OUT OF A
POSSIBLE TOTAL OF 100.
CLICK HERE TO FIND YOUR SCORE!
http://bit.ly/2od6cVJ
Growth of APIs - 32
CRM ENDPOINT SCORECARD (BEST-IN-CLASS API)
TOTAL SCORE: 91/100
CRITERIA
NOT APPLICABLE
POOR
(1 POINT)
OK
(4 POINTS)
GOOD
(7 POINTS)
EXCELLENT
(10 POINTS)
TOTAL
(POINTS)
STYLE
We have ranked API style from Hypermedia (Excellent), REST (Good), SOAP
(OK) & Other (Poor)

10
AUTH
API Authentication models ranked OAuth 2.0 (Excellent), OAuth 1.0 (Good),
API Key/Secret (OK), HTTP Basic Auth (Poor)

10
API DOCUMENTATION &
DATA TYPES
API Documentation options ranked from
OAI/Swagger (Excellent), OData (Good), XML or Other (OK), None (Poor)

10
API METADATA
DISCOVERY
API Metadata Discovery capabilities ranked from
Full Object & Type Discovery (Excellent), Objects only (Good), Type only (OK),
None (Poor)

10
EVENTS
API eventing support ranked from Pub/Sub (Excellent), Webhooks (Good),
Comet (OK), None (Poor)

7
BULK SUPPORT
Bulk upload & download support where applicable, is ranked Supported
(Excellent) or Unsupported (Poor)

10
PAGINATION
API Pagination support is ranked from Full Link Headers (Excellent) Paging
with total count (Good), Paging without count (OK), Paging without page size
config (Poor). Or not applicable where necessary.

7
HTTP VERBS
Good RESTful design dictates that the appropriate HTTP Verb be used for
each API action, and implementation is ranked from Complete (Excellent),
Partial (Good), Inconsistent (OK), Everything is POST or GET (Poor)

10
VERSION CONTROL
API Version control has been ranked according to developer experience from
Default version (Excellent), URI version (Good), Content Negotiation or HTTP
Header (OK), Inconsistent (Poor). Or if you haven't got to v2 yet then Not
Applicable.

7
ERROR HANDLING
Consistency and information provided across API error handling is ranked from
Complete (Excellent), Correct categories with limited info (Good), Some Error
Codes (OK), Inconsistent or Embedded (Poor)

10
API Calculator
Growth of APIs - 33
CRM ENDPOINT SCORECARD (WORST-IN-CLASS API)
TOTAL SCORE: 34/100
CRITERIA
NOT APPLICABLE
POOR
(1 POINT)
OK
(4 POINTS)
GOOD
(7 POINTS)
EXCELLENT
(10 POINTS)
TOTAL
POINTS
STYLE
We have ranked API style from Hypermedia (Excellent), REST (Good), SOAP
(OK) & Other (Poor)

4
AUTH
API Authentication models ranked OAuth 2.0 (Excellent), OAuth 1.0 (Good),
API Key/Secret (OK), HTTP Basic Auth (Poor)

1
API DOCUMENTATION &
DATA TYPES
API Documentation options ranked from
OAI/Swagger (Excellent), OData (Good), XML or Other (OK), None (Poor)

7
API METADATA
DISCOVERY
API Metadata Discovery capabilities ranked from
Full Object & Type Discovery (Excellent), Objects only (Good), Type only (OK),
None (Poor)

7
EVENTS
API eventing support ranked from Pub/Sub (Excellent), Webhooks (Good),
Comet (OK), None (Poor)

1
BULK SUPPORT
Bulk upload & download support where applicable, is ranked Supported
(Excellent) or Unsupported (Poor)

10
PAGINATION
API Pagination support is ranked from Full Link Headers (Excellent) Paging
with total count (Good), Paging without count (OK), Paging without page size
config (Poor). Or not applicable where necessary.

1
HTTP VERBS
Good RESTful design dictates that the appropriate HTTP Verb be used for
each API action, and implementation is ranked from Complete (Excellent),
Partial (Good), Inconsistent (OK), Everything is POST or GET (Poor)

1
VERSION CONTROL
API Version control has been ranked according to developer experience from
Default version (Excellent), URI version (Good), Content Negotiation or HTTP
Header (OK), Inconsistent (Poor). Or if you haven't got to v2 yet then Not
Applicable.

1
ERROR HANDLING
Consistency and information provided across API error handling is ranked from
Complete (Excellent), Correct categories with limited info (Good), Some Error
Codes (OK), Inconsistent or Embedded (Poor)

1
API Calculator
Growth of APIs - 34
YOUR API SCORECARD
Here's a blank canvas, download it, fill it out, get your score and share it! We'd love to hear how your API measures up against the rest of the industry.
Use the hashtag #APIScorecard and #StateOfAPIIntegration to help us track your data.
CRITERIA
NOT APPLICABLE
POOR
(1 POINT)
OK
(4 POINTS)
GOOD
(7 POINTS)
EXCELLENT
(10 POINTS)
TOTAL
4 POINTS
STYLE
We have ranked API style from Hypermedia (Excellent), REST (Good), SOAP
(OK) & Other (Poor)

AUTH
API Authentication models ranked OAuth 2.0 (Excellent), OAuth 1.0 (Good),
API Key/Secret (OK), HTTP Basic Auth (Poor)

API DOCUMENTATION &
DATA TYPES
API Documentation options ranked from
OAI/Swagger (Excellent), OData (Good), XML or Other (OK), None (Poor)

API METADATA
DISCOVERY
API Metadata Discovery capabilities ranked from
Full Object & Type Discovery (Excellent), Objects only (Good), Type only (OK),
None (Poor)

EVENTS
API eventing support ranked from Pub/Sub (Excellent), Webhooks (Good),
Comet (OK), None (Poor)

BULK SUPPORT
Bulk upload & download support where applicable, is ranked Supported
(Excellent) or Unsupported (Poor)

PAGINATION
API Pagination support is ranked from Full Link Headers (Excellent) Paging
with total count (Good), Paging without count (OK), Paging without page size
config (Poor). Or not applicable where necessary.

HTTP VERBS
Good RESTful design dictates that the appropriate HTTP Verb be used for
each API action, and implementation is ranked from Complete (Excellent),
Partial (Good), Inconsistent (OK), Everything is POST or GET (Poor)

VERSION CONTROL
API Version control has been ranked according to developer experience from
Default version (Excellent), URI version (Good), Content Negotiation or HTTP
Header (OK), Inconsistent (Poor). Or if you haven't got to v2 yet then Not
Applicable.

ERROR HANDLING
Consistency and information provided across API error handling is ranked from
Complete (Excellent), Correct categories with limited info (Good), Some Error
Codes (OK), Inconsistent or Embedded (Poor)

YOUR SCORE: _____/100
Growth of APIs - 35
API Calculator
CLICK HERE TO FIND YOUR SCORE!
http://bit.ly/2od6cVJ
API CALCULATOR
INTERACTIVE CALCULATOR
TO SCORE YOUR API
You can use the scorecard for yourself to determine your
score out of a possible total of 100.
Growth of APIs - 36
CLOSING
And there you have it. We hope you enjoyed seeing the data and
hearing from our contributors about the trends that are set to affect
APIs and application integration. Don't forget to see how your API
measures up against the rest of the industry - score your API and share
it! Follow the conversation by using the hashtag #APIScorecard and
#StateOfAPIIntegration.
Check out our resource center for other easy to follow information. If
you have questions, or would like to learn more about Cloud Elements,
contact us today!
TRY CLOUD ELEMENTS FOR FREE
Closing
Growth of APIs - 37
ABOUT CLOUD ELEMENTS
It's bigger than just a connection, integrating APIs is about moving data, powering
transactions, connecting mobile apps and thousands of other functions.
Cloud Elements is a cloud API integration platform that enables developers to
publish, integrate, aggregate and manage all of their APIs through a unified platform.
Using Cloud Elements, developers can quickly connect entire categories of cloud
services (e.g. CRM, Documents, Finance) using uniform APIs or simply synchronize
data between multiple cloud services (e.g. Salesforce, Zendesk, Quickbooks) using its
innovative integration toolkit.
Founded in October 2012, Cloud Elements is purpose built for developers to help
organize their world of APIs through a one-to-many approach. A 'Visionary' in API
Management, according to Gartner Inc., Cloud Elements is headquartered in Denver,
CO, but serves customers worldwide.
Learn more about us at:
WWW.CLOUD-ELEMENTS.COM