The Mashery API Management Kit: Tips and Advice for a Successful API Strategy

Whitepaper: Mashery API Management 101 Whitepaper: TurboCharge Your Mobile Strategy with APIs Whitepaper for Media/Publishers: 5 Tips for Navigating Digital Channels Whitepaper for Retailers: Accelerated Commerce - Digital Retail Strategies Whitepaper: Masherys Cloud Advantage - API Management in the Cloud

MAShErY API MANAGEMENT 101:

What Is An API?
From a business perspective, an API is a way to leverage assets you already own and increase your innovation, product development, market knowledge, and revenues.

Getting Your Content From There To Everywhere

Using an Application Programming Interface, companies can offer software developers a limited set of databases and software programs related to one or more of their products. These new coders might be company employees, corporate partners, or outside developers with novel ideas about creating value. No one using the API can change the core data. They can create new things, though, under rules established by the owner. Big tech companies have used APIs to tap into a bigger talent pool for a while. For example, independent developers built thousands of applications running on Apples iPhone, via APIs controlled by Apple. When Google wanted an army of developers to build novel applications of its Maps program, it used APIs. In a short time, thousands of people around the world created maps that listed their favorite restaurants, locations of where a band was touring, even places mentioned on the TV show Seinfield. The blend of native data, like the Maps information, with new and unexplored ideas is called a mashup. The term originally refers to the great result when a music deejay creates something unexpected and wonderful from artfully blending two great songs. Not incidentally, that is why were called Mashery: We create and manage environments where developers build valuable mashups for companies like Netflix, Best Buy, and The New York Times. We have been doing this for years, and have built a network of over 50,000 developers worldwide, along with proven standards for release, analysis and reporting. APIs are used for much more than mashups, and have a long history in computing. Developers have used an API for access to specifications for protocols, data structures, and other elements that are critical for consumers of whatever is created. APIs are used to run one or more programming languages, and relied on for the rules by which a computer programming language is run. That is still a big reason for APIs, but they have taken on a whole new life and meaning as the Internet has enabled the digital spread of information, and opened up computing to more players.

Mashery API Management 101: Getting Your Content From There to Everywhere

What Do I Need An API?

There is an old saying in high tech: The smartest people are always somewhere else. Meaning that no matter how smart, motivated and talented your team, they could probably do even better with the creative insights of the right person. With 8 billion people on the planet, though, that person is probably not in the next room. Welcome to another place where the Internet has changed everything. APIs and mashups, delivered over the Web, enable you to interact with more talent than anyone in an earlier generation could expect to meet in one lifetime. Your data, your product, and your brand can travel anywhere, gaining visibility and customers in new places as it is employed in all kinds of new ways. This might be as simple as better customer service on your Website. Mashery client Best Buy opened catalog data to its employees through an API, and one of them created a better way for online shoppers to locate stores where a product they wanted was in stock. Or it might mean putting your company anywhere you want on the Web, as Netflix did when it used Mashery to put its service on mobile devices, social networks, and third-party Websites, while protecting user data. APIs and Mashups are part of a revolution in commerce. Through a Web browser, we now access millions of computer servers at once, linked together to form a cloud of super computers, available at low cost. On a similar scale, people are linked intentionally and on an ad hoc basis over the Internet, creating information about celebrities, revolutions, and even traffic jams in real time, faster and often better than traditional media could.

What happens when you blend the two? Open APIs use the new scale of computing and large-scale human interaction for unprecedented collaboration on products and services. The resulting mashups mean new product strengths, access to previously unknown customers, and valuable data around innovation, talent, and brand. Mashery has pursued this vision for years, building trusted products we are delighted to see moving into the mainstream of commerce. Within a few years, we are confident, the question will not be Why do I need an API? It will be What did I ever do without one?

Mashery API Management 101: Getting Your Content From There to Everywhere

What Can

Mashery Do For Me?

Mashery is the place for API-based business creation. Our guiding principles are trust, collaboration, and presence, in service of rapid, value-based business creation . They have made us the leader in this industry, with the most customers, the most soughtafter thinkers, and the most forward-looking products. We know how valuable your data is. That is why we provide a secure platform in which you can share it however you choose: With internal third-parties with sky-high dreams. Our Developer Portal, branded to extend your organization, is

Industry Leader
Developers can gather there to communicate with you, learn what data are available to them, link to live applications, and view sample code. They do this through our API key, which also ensures that all applications leveraging your data adhere to any Terms of Service or security authorization you choose.

Thriving Developer Network

We are also passionate about fostering APIs as a business tool, and have built a network of over 140,000 registered developers. The Mashery API Network provides them with information about whats out there, and gives you assurance that all calls on your data are authenticated, immediately, with no impact to your existing systems.

Strategic Services to Match Business Goals

While we manage the developers, we also collect information on which applications are making calls to your APIs, providing you with rapid insight into who is doing what, and what success it is having capacities, popular and trending topics, and other insights into the success of new strategies.

Technology That Grows With You

While we manage the developers, we also collect information on which applications are making calls to your APIs, providing you with rapid insight into who is doing what, and what success it is having capacities, popular and trending topics, and other insights into the success of new strategies.

Mashery API Management 101: Getting Your Content From There to Everywhere

Mashery API Management 101: Getting Your Content From There to Everywhere

Mashery, Inc. 717 Market Street, Suite 300 San Francisco, CA 94103 sales@mashery.com (415) 684-7200 http://www.mashery.com

turbochArge your mobile strAtegy with Apis

Are you tAlking mobile Apps And pArtnerships?

inside:
7 steps to A greAt Api progrAm

Then youre talking APIs.

Is your IT shop flooded with requests to support new mobile apps and strategic partnerships? If so, experts agree its time to invest in a secure, flexible Web API, or application programming interface. APIs are at the center of what Gartner calls the new extensible enterprise.

but how to build A robust, scAlAble Api progrAm?

In this white paper, Mashery the leading API management solution for over 150 top enterprises including best buy, netflix, expedia, espn, and the new york timesshares lessons learned about deploying and managing successful enterprise APIs.

contact mashery www.mashery.com sales@mashery.com

connect with mashery Twitter: @mashery FB: mashery.com/facebook

successful Api program

STRATEGI CP AR

7 steps to a

L PROJE CT RNA S TE IN

API

tArget YOUR mobile App deVelopers

An API will turbocharge app development among your own developers, your strategic partners, and even public developerspeople outside your company who are itching to innovate with your data. Successful API programs target some or all of these groups. For example, Best Buy saves millions of dollars and weeks of development time by exposing API resources to its outsourcing partners and agencies. But BBYOPEN, an open version of Best Buys API, also powers partnerships like Citibanks rewards program, in which Citibank customers can redeem rewards points for Best Buy merchandise. Once you decide which developer groups to target, you can set appropriate access policies and terms of service.

S ER TN
PU BL I

YOUR DATA & SERVICES

C

optimiZe your Api For mobile

API
DATA & SERVICES
TRAFFIC MANAGER RESPONSE RESPONSE CACHE

LOPERS VE DE

Mobile devices are getting more powerful, but they still have limitations in processing power and bandwidth. Where possible, minimize response size by adopting lean formats like JSON (more on that in step 6) and allowing apps to specify the size of data chunks youll return. Compress responses with GZIP, especially when payloads are large. If youre serving the same responses over and over, you can gain big efficiencies by caching responses close to where apps live through a content delivery network, or CDN. Your data center will enjoy a lighter load, and youll see faster response times. Mashery customers serve up to 90% of responses from Masherys global, distributed cache, speeding response times by 10x or more.

CLOUD
MASHERY

3
APP APP
API PARTNER PORTAL

leVerAge the cloudor stAy on-prem

Where you put your API traffic management solution matters. For maximum ease of deployment and high-performance caching, distribute your traffic manager through a cloud-based delivery platform. For data around which the business requires more control or security, consider an on-premise traffic management solution. Either way, be sure that you can set policies, manage developers, and monitor traffic across all traffic managers from a central dashboard.

API

YOUR DATA CENTER

API

CONTROL CENTER
API TRAFFIC CONTROL API REPORTING & ANALYTICS

API

Apps

LOCAL

trust some mobile Apps more thAn others

GOLD
API
DATA & SERVICES

Its becoming increasingly common for successful API providers to think of their APIs as not just one set of methods and policies, but rather as a product line of API packages. One package might support apps built by your own developerswith generous rate limits and extensive access to corporate resourceswhile another might enforce stricter limits and expose only a subset of resources for close partners. An even more restrictive package might support public developers. The most successful API programs now package not only different levels of access, but also different business modelseach tailored to the needs of a specific developer segment.

ER LV SI

BRO N
connect with mashery Twitter: @mashery FB: mashery.com/facebook

contact mashery www.mashery.com sales@mashery.com

ZE

5 6 7

distribute your buy button

2005
READ APIs

2007
WRITE APIs

TODAY
COMMERCE APIs

These days, mobile apps are expected not only to deliver product and service information, but also to handle full-on transactions. For PCI compliant enterprisesthose that submit to audits around the Payment Card Industry standard for handling credit card datathis can present challenges. Mashery recommends several best practices for extending commerce to mobile apps. For your own apps, encrypt data and get PCI auditors to add your API to their scope. To allow partner apps to transact, employ a PCI-compliant API distribution platform. Or, use OAuth to let app users authorize purchases using payment info thats already on file.

delight your mobile deVelopers

Whether theyre on your corporate campus or at a hackathon (more on those below), developers can do more with your API if you make life easy for them. That means creating a portal where they can get easy access to keys, giving them interactive documentation (such as Mashery I/O Docs) that let developers explore and test your API before they write code, and providing usage reports so they can see how their apps are interacting with your API over time.

i/o docs

Its also important to employ popular design principles and formats. According to Programmable Web, nearly 75 percent of open APIs follow RESTful design principles. If your API is SOAP-based, consider the advantages of REST. Likewise, the majority of open APIs now return responses in JSON, the lean Javascript object notation that is edging out XML.

grow your deVeloper community

Finally, remember that a thriving community of apps doesnt happen without a thriving community of developers. If youre targeting public developers, sponsor hackathons or other app contests that encourage developers to dig into your API. Companies including USA Today, Yellow Pages Group, and Lulu take advantage of Masherys Developer Outreach platform to reach our community of over 130,000 (and growing) registered developers through Mashery-sponsored hackathons, the Mashery Developer Newsletters, and other programs.

contact mashery www.mashery.com sales@mashery.com

connect with mashery Twitter: @mashery FB: mashery.com/facebook

MEDIA whItE pApEr

From Bookstore to Appstore:

executive summary

5 tips for Navigating New Digital Channels for publishers and media providers

in recent years ubiquitous connectivity has created a generation of consumers demanding access to any content at any time. while the impact on formats to support myriad devices has not been insignificant, the shift in channels and distribution methods has been downright explosive - a splintering of once predictable channels splintering like a series of fireworks proliferating into a showering of ignitable embers. hurried commuters checking local weather on an iphone app, delayed travelers downloading an eBook just paces away from the airport bookstore, mystery buffs consulting with a book store employee before filling up an eBook with the latest titles, students reading text books on tablets, and newspapers coming to life with relevant headlines, sports scores and weather based on location - all examples of viable digital channels.

the once mighty bookstore end cap has been handily replaced by high ranking in search results, prominent placement in an app store, maximum stars on user rating or native inclusion on a newly released device. even as this introduction is being written, signing onto an internet connection at the local starbucks invites a free peek at a selected book.

this whitepaper provides 5 simple tips for helping publishing and media professionals rethink traditional distribution channels. we invite you to read and ponder, to provoke the status quo and embrace the vast opportunity that todays rapidly shifting digital landscape offers.

when youre finished changing, youre finished.

- Benjamin Franklin

From Bookstore to Appstore: 5 tips For NAvigAtiNg New DigitAl ChANNels For puBlishers AND meDiA proviDers

MEDIA whItE pApEr

tip #1: Quiet Your inner Chicken little

much like mark twains first death, reports of the demise of a reading public have been greatly exaggerated. while the growth in digital media is often associated with an American public reading less, nothing could be further from the truth. in fact, the average American reads over 35,000 words a day (the equivalent of roughly 1/3 of an average novel). As a whole, our consumption of the written word has increased from 26% of our daily dose of information in 1960 to over 36% in 2008. while it is true that traditional print media (like newspapers and books) have declined, digital reading has more than made up for that drop and all signs point to this trend continuing. A recent poll found that in 2010, nearly 40% (39.5%) of all us mobile phone users used their device to access news and information - more than those who used it for email (30.5%) and nearly twice as many as used it for playing games (23.2%).

with digital readers (whether they be smartphones, tablets, ereaders or even interactive displays) quite literally in the hands of consumers almost 24x7, there has never been a better time to reach them. the key lies in understanding the shifting and splintering means by which these consumers discover and access consumer information.

tip #2: the early Bird Catches the worm

remember, its not just content providers participating in the race for readership. Device makers and platform providers are just as eager to grab mind and market share. in 2011 alone, an estimated 101 varieties of tablets are scheduled to hit the market and ereaders predicted to be sold. in order to differentiate amongst a growing assortment of increasingly similar products, device makers rely on marketing that highlights each devices unique capabilities and functionality. And this means they need great sample content with which to showcase these features.

As a content provider, getting in early means a unique opportunity to include your content in marketing and promotions for the devices themselves. with device manufacturers pouring big bucks into advertising this could mean - literally - millions of dollars worth of free promotion by simply being first to market.

The team at USA Today worked with a design firm expert in advanced and tactile interface design to create a USA Today iPad app in time for a launch the same day the iPad was released in the US market. The app was heavily showcased by Apple evangelists as part of the overall iPad launch. From day one, USA Today enjoyed a position as the #1 downloaded iPad news application as well as top rankings in both downloads (nearly 200,000 in the first 2 weeks alone) and user reviews. The success of the application even buoyed USA TODAYs rankings in other digital channels- with the newspapers online Alexa ranking rocketing from #46 to #20.
2

From Bookstore to Appstore: 5 tips For NAvigAtiNg New DigitAl ChANNels For puBlishers AND meDiA proviDers

MEDIA whItE pApEr

tip #3: Dont be Afraid to let others innovate for You At least at First
No single person, department or even company is capable of delivering a user experience optimized for each and every one of the diverse offerings of digital platforms and channels. in-store kiosks, tactile tablets, lightweight ereaders all offer unique flavors of user interaction. even a well-managed list of projects, when delivered sequentially, means a constant game of catch up in delivering apps to market in a timely way. Allowing outside developers - whether they be trusted partners or thirdparty developers - access to portions of your content and functionality not only helps you deliver speed to market, but often results in a better end-user experience when these partners provide device-specific expertise. this generations breed of creative inventors, developers, cite reasons as varied as playing with new data to garnering prestige to good ole fashioned money as reasons for using third party data to build apps. outside innovation can be a phenomenal method for testing new formats, platforms and interfaces and then improving upon them with in-house resources at a later date. Finding ways to engage outside developers doesnt mean needing to give away exclusive rights. And as your digital programs grow, seeding outside innovation can be a fantastic way to find talent aligned with your organization.

Netflix opened access to their database of available movies, ratings, meta-data and add to queue functionality to developer communities in Fall of 2008. Within weeks they had their first Blackberry app and several iPhone apps - including at least one listed as a top app. Now, 2 years later, the Netflix content had proliferated to over 200 different devices. Next steps for Netflix involve utilizing the valuable data from what theyve learned to focus on taking innovation internal.

tip #4: All Content is not Created equal

opening up content to outside innovation doesnt have to be as black and white as the newspapers of yore. providing portions of content or limited volumes for free is a great way to allow outside innovators to sample your content, test out applications and markets and enter into a relationship with you. Deeper levels of content consumption can be monetized with an agreement to carry advertising or a link back to your company-owned properties for further reading. licensing tiers not only offer a practical way to be open without being too open, but also provide opportunities to monetize content that may have been sitting in digital archives collecting virtual dust. historical data can be a treasure trove for powering applications that look to provide comprehensive information about niche topics or to illustrate information over time.

From Bookstore to Appstore: 5 tips For NAvigAtiNg New DigitAl ChANNels For puBlishers AND meDiA proviDers

MEDIA whItE pApEr

In May, 2010, The Guardian (UK) launched an Open Platform initiative giving access to not only current content but also rich datastores and an archive of over 1 million articles. A multi-tiered business model allows for The Guardian to combine an open approach with path toward monetization. Partners fall into one of three tiers: Tier 1 partners gain free access to Guardian headlines, tags, meta data etc. and can use any and all content for free. Tier 2 partners are granted a special license to republish Guardian content. While the agreement is predicated on the Guardians ability to embed advertising into the new content, the application owners are free to keep any revenue associated with the app. Tier 3 partnerships consist of custom solutions for licensing Guardian content.

tip #5: extend Your Brand with Free Content

the open content revolution extends far beyond just making money. it represents an ideology, a new culture and includes even government initiatives in data transparency. the Freedom of information Act introduced by president lyndon B Johnson in september, 1966 began a period in modern times to celebrate the sharing of information throughout society. morphed into the electronic Freedom of information Act Amendment of 1996, the current administration vowed for an unprecendented level of openness in government literally hours into taking oath of office. trusted brands in media and publishing have an unique opportunity to partner with data/content providers in bringing this information to the masses. leading and emerging brands alike have learned to utilize content generated elsewhere by providing access in easy to consume interfaces. providing this data as a service presents an opportunity to extend the range of an organizations current servicesultimately extending reach to more apps, more devices and into the hands of more end-users.

The New York Times embraces the very concept of openness - being one of the first newspapers worldwide to open their content for consumption by outside developers with their Open API Program. While much of the content is generated within the walls of the Times, their Open API program has also provided public data for consumption. Information like Campaign Finance data, U.S. Congressional voting data, Local District geographic data and information on State Legislators all represent public data presented for easy access by innovative developers building apps as varied as Town Hall iPhone app that helps research the U.S. Congress to mashups displaying campaign contributions by geography to a data visualization app that displays words prominently used in the Senate.

From Bookstore to Appstore: 5 tips For NAvigAtiNg New DigitAl ChANNels For puBlishers AND meDiA proviDers

meDiA white pAper

Sources:
Bohn, roger e, short, James e. how much information? 2009 report on American Consumer. information industry Center university of California, san Diego. January 2010.

u.s. Digital Year in review 2010: A recap of the Year in Digital media. Comscore. February 2011.

kindle leading e-reader market, ipad rules tabletsso far. tech Journal south. January 19, 2011. http://www.techjournalsouth.com/2011/01/kindle-leading-e-reader-market-ipad-rulestablets-so-far/

iDC worldwide Quarterly media tablet and ereader tracker. international Data Corporation (iDC). January 18, 2011.

hugo. the state of tablet pCs in 2011. gotta Be mobile. February 11, 2011 . http://www. gottabemobile.com/2011/02/11/the-state-of-tablet-pcs-in-2011/

Frommer, Dan. heres why Apples ipad will Dominate the tablet market For Years. Business insider. February 3, 2011. http://www.businessinsider.com/tablets-2011-2#

wikipedia. Comparison of e-Book readers.Feb 13, 2011. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Comparison_of_e-book_readers

From Bookstore to Appstore: 5 tips For NAvigAtiNg New DigitAl ChANNels For puBlishers AND meDiA proviDers

mashery, inc. 717 market street, suite 300 san Francisco, CA 94103 sales@mashery.com (415) 684-7200 http://www.mashery.com

BUSINESS WHITEPAPER

ACCELERATED COMMERCE:
KEY API STRATEGIES FOR DIGITAL RETAIL INTRODUCTION
2011 saw double-digit increases in eCommerce despite overall worldwide economic growth rates hovering just slightly above zero. Cyber-Monday alone set a record 22% increase in year over year sales and the reports pouring in from 2011 holiday spending include all kinds of record breaking figures. Times have never been better for eCommerce professionals. The future of digital is even rosier. With smartphones in the pockets of 48% of Americans (and over 50% in the U.K.) digital in-store kiosks proliferating, and an 80% increase in electronic payments opportunities to drive more and more digital commerce is coming the way of savvy retailers. With devices including mobile phones, tablets, in-store kiosks, internet-enabled POS stations, connected gaming consoles, TVs, and even refrigerators, consumers are everywhere. Never before have there been so many ways to connect to purchase-ready buyers. Yet with each of these new digital opportunities, comes another item on the list of projects piled up in an IT departments backlog the long meetings of pie-charts and statistics around which smartphone platform to tackle first, the queue of bar-code scanning affiliates waiting for your data feed, the integration project with a mobile website and store location information. Oh, yes, and that iPad app the CEO has requested personally. This paper examines how an eCommerce executive looking to conquer the diversity of devices and proliferation of digital screens can leverage APIs to accelerate development, tackle multiple projects simultaneously and integrate channels both internal and externally.

An 80% increase in electronic payments mean only more and more digital commerce coming the way of savvy retailers.

WHATS AN API?
Traditionally, databases, product catalogs or content servers are programmed to talk to a single system - say your website. Efforts to allow other systems (say an iPhone app) to talk to something like your product catalog require one-off efforts of intense programming. An API allows you to open up - or expose - your data in a way that makes it accessible to any number of devices outside of your website or even rich internet widgets within your existing website. In effect, an API becomes the key to a one-stop shop enabling you to explore any number of emerging channels without repeating efforts. This white paper is intended to introduce you to the opportunities that APIs offer and key strategies for optimizing the effectiveness of an API program.

WHATS IN AN API?
An API is an easy way to expose data and services to digital developers- whether they be in-house, partners, affiliates or even long-tail developers. Think of the assets to which they would like automatic access - the building blocks they might need to build their extension to your business and this helps paint a picture of the best APIs to build.

ACCELERATED COMMERCE: KEY API STRATEGIES FOR DIGITAL RETAIL

BUSINESS WHITEPAPER

Retailers with more mature API programs, like Best Buy, have even begun to brand their APIs with iconography representing the different categories, promotional videos touting their value and - of course - a plethora of sample applications, solid documentation (consistently the most asked for support feature for developers) and frictionless registration.

BEST BUY APIs

Product API Reviews API

Commerce API

Categories API

Stores API

BBYOffer API

The Best Buy APIs represent all relevant aspects of their commerce experience and are leveraged in apps from affiliates, internal developers, key strategic partners and even long-tail developers.

BBYScanThe QR Code Service API

BBYFeed

Mobile Upgrade Checker API

Source: Best Buy Remix Developer Portal https://developer.bestbuy.com Products API Pricing Availability Specifications Descriptions and images for nearly a million current and historical products Commerce API
(Invite Only API)

Stores API Address Geo-location Stores hours and phone number. Reviews API Reviewer Rating Date Submitted Review commentary Categories API Category and product searches within category on bestbuy.com. Scan API

BBYSCanThe QR Code Service API Provides usage data on who is scanning QR codes, as well as when, where, and what is being scanned within Best Buy stores. BBYFeed The Human Answers API
(Internal Only API)

BBYOffer API
(Internal Best Buy API)

Provides access to the latest Best Buy offers and promotions. Mobile Upgrade Checker API Allows users to check the status of their upgrade status, and determine the trade in value of their current phone.

Provides seamless purchasing and product fulfillment through at - home delivery or in-store pick-up for partner e-commerce or web-based sites

Provides access to data learned from customer and associate interactions.

BUILDING THE BUSINESS CASE:

What Will/Can APIs do for my Business?
While APIs represent an underlying data structure, the adoption of an API-based strategy can be a massive accelerator for retail businesses. As a matter of fact, the decision to adopt an API strategy in our rapidly shifting digital world, is one of the most important business decisions that todays digital commerce executives can make.

ACCELERATED COMMERCE: KEY API STRATEGIES FOR DIGITAL RETAIL

BUSINESS WHITEPAPER

APIs offer the following benefits for retailers of all types and sizes:

Accelerate Mobile Strategy

A Mobile strategy can be defined as much more than a roadmap for your next iPhone app. With dozens of mobile platforms, tablets, internet-enabled POS and store kiosks - all connected from gaming devices to household appliances to bus stops and even to pill cap bottles - the key to a solid mobile strategy is in being able to proliferate your brand or offering across all relevant digital touch points. APIs decrease development time for each new app or platform offering often by over 75%. Additionally, because APIs allow your data and services to be more easily accessed, the ability to contract with partner organizations becomes more seamless. NETFLIX READY DEVICES By utilizing their API, Netflix was able to extend their service to over 200 different devices in less than two years including major television sets, gaming devices, remote controls and all major mobile platforms.

Exponentially Increase Affiliations

Affiliates drive a substantial portion of many eCommerce programs. Yet data access methods often remain stuck in the data feeds or spreadsheet dumps of yesteryear. Additionally, partner on-boarding can occupy weeks (sometimes...months) of legal wrangling, supportcalls and integration plans. Retailers modernizing their affiliate relationships with APIs report the reduction of integration time from weeks to minutes (yes, really). Additionally, seamless on-boarding of affiliates allow for effortless engagement with long-tail affiliates.

EXPEDIA AFFILIATES The revamp of their API and affiliate program has allowed Expedia Affiliate Network to support over 3,000 active affiliates. Their API includes access to Hotel, Airline, and Rental Car information, and is available in 20 languages.

BEST BUY CITI-REWARDS Through a high-profile partnership, Citibank rewards members can purchase Best Buy products using Citi-Rewards points. Customers in a Best Buy store can scan a barcode of any product and find out on the spot if they have adequate Citi-Reward points for purchase. Through a mobile device, these same joint customers can even purchase products using points.

Transform Partner Integrations

Like affiliate integrations, APIs drastically reduce the integration time with key strategic partners not only adding efficiency to existing relationships but freeing up resources to focus on exploring partners that leverage different and new capabilities like bar-code scanning, geo-local, group buying, and social media.

ACCELERATED COMMERCE: KEY API STRATEGIES FOR DIGITAL RETAIL

BUSINESS WHITEPAPER

At Comcast, it used to take 6 to 8 months to share resources between internal groups. Now? 30 minutes.
Agustn Schapira, Principal Architect, Comcast

Un-Silo Channels
Sometimes it feels like the retail industry has been searching for true multi-channel integration since the web first sprung onto those clunky desktop terminals. Since then, the holy grail of a 360 customer-centric experience has seemed as elusive as Bigfoot. APIs enable rapid and seamless data sharing between various internal teams and systems. Think web, store, enterprise, POS, inventory, CRM, mobile all talking to each other as a true cross-channel integration.

Foster Innovation
Because APIs allow for such easy access to underlying data and services, carefully managed APIs can be made accessible to a broader developer community - both inside of your organization and out. Developers bring expertise to varying markets, demographics and even platforms - taking your presence to places even the most creative planning committee might not have imagined. Hackathons - both community and internal are a great way to allow developers to experiment with creating new and innovative experiences.

ASOS HACK DAY At ASOS, an internal hack day resulted in numerous prototypes including a social shopping app, a portable ASOS search button for integration onto any website, an online fashion trading game, twitter search bot and the winning team (pictured here) a single button integration allowing customers to discover, save or consume any part of the ASOS experience through readers such as Feedly and Flipboard.

WHO OWNS APIS? IT OR BUSINESS?

Much like the early days of the web required cooperation between technical and business teams, a robust API program require tight coordination between business strategy and technical expertise. A recent Forrester Research report titled The Agile Commerce Platform summed it up well,

APIs are not new. Developers and IT professionals have used APIs to integrate systems for many years now. What is new is how APIs are becoming a key business strategy, to the point where entire businesses are built off of them.
With uber-connected customers demanding digital retail engagement that puts them at the center of multiple touch points, platforms and partners agility becomes a key requirement for success. An API-based digital strategy offers the fundamental basis for not just staying competitive, but relevant in todays rapidly shifting digital landscape.
ACCELERATED COMMERCE: KEY API STRATEGIES FOR DIGITAL RETAIL

MASHERY WHITE PAPER

Masherys Cloud Advantage

Why do companies like Expedia, Best Buy, and The New York Times choose Mashery? One reason: the worlds leading API management solution is built for the cloud.
APIs offer an unprecedented opportunity to expand your companys relationships with customers. Thats because they make it easy to deploy content and services in new, ultra-relevant contexts. Those can include your own branded apps, integrations with strategic partners, and co-branded apps built by external developers. But launching an API means opening new channels of digital distribution. And like offline distributors, youll be expected to deliver the goods quickly and reliably. If your website goes down, your company suffers; if your API goes down, everyone who relies on your API also suffers. Over 150 enterprisesincluding Netflix, Best Buy, Expedia, Dun & Bradstreet, and The New York Timeshave turned to Mashery to distribute their APIs. One reason: our global, state-of-the-art API distribution platform is built for the cloud, with full redundancy, failover and dynamic scaling out of the box. (Of course, without the box!) Heres how we maximize security, reliability and speed for the worlds most demanding API providers.

Mashery White Paper: Up in the Cloud

MASHERY WHITE PAPER

Dynamic Scaling
At Mashery, weve seen demand for customers APIs spike by orders of magnitude overnight. All it takes is one hot app to plug in your API, and you can scratch early assumptions about capacity. You need an API management platform that can scale out, not just up. Masherys cloud architecture allows us to scale dynamically and limitlessly, with no action required by our customers. In fact, if a solution provider tells you theyve architected for the cloud and then says you have to add boxes (or instances) when you reach a certain level of traffic, ask why. A true cloud solution should scale through multiple component instances, across zones and regions.

Quaternary Failover
All Mashery customers are protected by 4 levels of redundancy and failover. Mashery is engineered not only for secure zone and region failover, but also for failover between data center providers. In addition to the Mashery Enterprise API Distribution Network (on the Amazon EC2 platform), weve assembled a second network, Mashery Premium, consisting of private co-location facilities around the world. Primary failover is application failover, in which Mashery functional application components failover to scaled instances. Secondary failover is between zones. When a zone fails, traffic is still served from the same location, but functional component instances run in a different zone. Tertiary failover happens between locations. In the cloud, this means switching from one region to another (typically the nearest working region). Quaternary failover is between networks. The Mashery Enterprise API Distribution Network can failover to the Mashery Premium Network, and vice versa, meaning that for API management, our customers business continuity planning is completely handled by Mashery.

Smart, Flexible Caching

The true consumers of your API are the users of applications built by you and your partners. Just as your website must serve

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pages quickly, your API must achieve very fast response times. Caching not only speeds responses, but also reduces the load on your infrastructure by minimizing repetitive processing. Weve seen our customers serve as many as 75% of responses from cache, improving response time by 10x or more. We work with our customers to optimize their caching strategies, and we give them full control over caching policies through our administration dashboard.

Global POPs and Geo-Routing

More and more, application deployment and API interactions are happening on a global scale. Likewise, an API delivery network should consist of POPs in close proximity to API consumers. Mashery maintains POPs around the world to ensure proximity not only to application users, but also to your API resources. Furthermore, we replicate caches close to API consumers to achieve the best performance.

Watchdogs
Watchdogsa.k.a. monitoring and health check systemsrestart or repair inoperative components. They wake up at regular intervals, and if all is well, they go back to sleep. If theres a problem, they alert us and fix it. Mashery runs a complex collection of watchdogs built from third-party tools (such as Webmetrics and Nagios) and our own instrumentation. The watchdogs monitor each system level: component, application, zone, region, network, Internet, and our customer data centers. Failover and restart of our components is automatic and dynamic.

Application-Level Redundancy
Of course, its standard web development practice to separate presentation, business logic, and data layers. In the cloud, the low cost of instances allows us to take separation of concerns one step furtherby splitting business logic into discrete,

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redundant functional components that run in their own instances. Take API traffic management. Masherys most important task is keeping API traffic flowing securely and in accordance with access policies set by our customers. To that end, weve broken our architecture into three functional components, each scaling across its own instances: Traffic controller: access, security and policy administration Logs module: data analysis and reporting Data layer: API access policies (database and distributed cache)

The traffic controller must execute even if the data layer is unavailable, so weve split the data layer into a cache and a database. The traffic controller first tries to grab policy data from the distributed cache; if the cache is unavailable, the controller hits the database. This ensures that API calls are handled quickly and dependably. Traffic continues to flow, even if the database is temporarily unavailable.

Testing, Testing and More Testing

Its one thing to say youve built in redundancy and failover, but quite another to demonstrate it. Mashery customer Netflix famously lets loose Chaos Monkey, a bot that randomly shuts down components on the Netflix production cloud. At Mashery we run regular drills in which we shut down system components to make sure failover measures are in working order.

Questions or comments?
Wed love to hear from you. Please use the contact info below to get in touch.

Mashery, Inc. 717 Market Street, Ste. 300 San Francisco, CA 94103

sales@mashery.com http://www.mashery.com