APIs provide a way for one software application or system to interact with another. Some enterprise IT organizations are acting as API providers--creating APIs to provide access to their own internal systems. Others are acting as API consumers--connecting their own applications to those of other entities by using APIs provided by those entities. And a hefty percentage of companies are doing both.

However, with all the hype around the so-called "API economy," APIs aren't a shiny new technology--they've been around a long time. And in the final analysis, APIs are simply codeóproprietary code--allowing disparate systems to interoperate. 

In a world accustomed to the ease of use and high performance of commercial products supporting Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) connections, APIs are a clunky, inelegant solution. Each is custom written and must be manually maintained to keep pace with business and industry changes. Performance is variable and unpredictable, based on the connection method, the availability/capacity of back-end systems, and the efficiency of the code itself. As API usage escalates, capacity demands on back-end systems can grow exponentially. And to top it all off, many traditional Application Performance Management (APM) solutions lack support for API connections, making troubleshooting and root-cause analysis difficult.

With this survey-based research, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) analysts set out to assess the API economy from multiple dimensions. Examining both the "consumer" and "provider" sides of the equation, the study explores the challenges of API usage in todayís production environments. This white paper summarizes the survey findings on the deployment, management, and governance-related challenges of delivering API-driven services.