Digital Transformation & “The Tower of Babel” Effect

Effects of Siloes and Disparate Environments in APIM

As the story goes, an ambitious society with a single unified language set out on a project to build a towering monument that would reach the heavens.

But, as they built upwards, divine intervention scattered them around the world… creating multiple languages and cultures.

Their progress halted.

Each group settled in different parts of the world, building cities with their own unique architecture, infrastructure, and transportation systems.

Left to themselves, these cities grew quickly. The rapid expansion led to unplanned streets, sudden bridges, and often redundant tunnels.

So absorbed in its own work and development that each failed to see the bigger picture, how to efficiently connect with a neighboring city, or even what routes already existed within its own borders.

Despite these internal challenges the groups eventually grew advanced enough to begin pursuing opportunities in trade and expansion, crossing distant shores to reach one another.

Can you guess what happened next?

That’s right! Progress halted again.

No longer speaking the same language, they found themselves unable to easily exchange information. Their cities grew in isolation, and so had strikingly different infrastructure, governing bodies, and technology had evolved independently to the point of incompatibility.

Worse yet, they had all but forgotten the shared vision that set them down this path of growth in the first place.

Now, let’s picture this analogy as the blueprint for digital transformation initiatives in modern enterprise organizations.

Example Bank, Image by Author

The Tower: Digital Customer Experience Overhaul in Banking

Our Example Bank, recognizing the increasing reliance of its customers on digital channels and the need to compete with agile fintech startups, set out on an important initiative: the Digital Customer Experience Overhaul.

The goals were as follows:

1. Online Banking Revamp: Modernize the web interface, making it more user-friendly and feature-rich. Include features like budgeting tools, visual spending trackers, and integrated financial advice.
2. Mobile App Development: Beyond just checking balances or transferring funds, the bank aimed to offer mobile check deposits, biometric authentication, chatbots for immediate customer service requests, and instant loan approvals.
3. AI-driven Chatbot Implementation: 24/7 customer service without human assistance for standard questions, with smooth escalation to human operators for complex issues.
4. Integration with Digital Payment Platforms: Allows customers to easily link their accounts with digital wallets, payment apps, and e-commerce sites.

Given the scope of this transformation, different BUs (Business Units) got involved:

• The Retail Banking BU took the lead on the online banking revamp and mobile app development.
• The IT department collaborated with a third-party AI firm for the chatbot feature, considering the specialized expertise required.
• The Partnerships and Alliances BU navigated collaborations with digital payment platforms.

As these projects progressed, each BU, operating in its own silo and driven by a unique set of requirements and priorities, selected different API (Application Programmable Interface) gateways and tech solutions. For example, the mobile app might use one set of services and gateways for its backend, while the online banking platform chose another for integration reasons. The AI chatbot, being a third-party collaboration, brought in its own technology stack.

With no easy way to discover and integrate these APIs across the board, the bank faced challenges in offering a seamless customer experience. A customer’s interaction on the chatbot might not reflect immediately in their mobile app, or vice versa.

While seemingly minor, these gaps can significantly impact customer satisfaction and trust.

An effective Digital Transformation initiative requires agility.

Within digital ecosystems leveraging multiple cloud environments and API delivery models, how can organizations overcome the challenges created by poor API discovery and improve collaboration among teams, BUs, and external consumers?

Right now, one of the biggest gaps in software development is that there is little-to-no visibility between API gateway providers (see Disparate Environment image below).

• Developer teams work in siloes to build new digital products across different environments, unaware of what code is already available for reuse.
• Separate BUs struggle to integrate their services bi-laterally due to their varied tech stacks.
• Partners struggle with onboarding due to manual API provisioning processes.

Developer Portals provided by gateway vendors typically integrate through a 1:1 mapping to an API gateway, meaning most aren’t able to expose APIs held in different cloud environments. This creates a problem in that developer portals are often an add-on to gateway services, an after-thought intended to create vendor lock-in around a full life cycle management suite of integrated services (API testing, monitoring, governance, security etc.), and don’t holistically think about the API consumer experience across the organization.

Portal features to consider: Landing pages, educational resources, roles and permissions, private and public APIs, monetization, subscription plans, token-based auth, and documentation.

It’s becoming apparent to technology leaders that an effective API strategy benefits from API Portals that support any existing and future gateways/environments the organization might choose to employ. An API Portal should be open, extensible, and focus on the API DX (Developer Experience), but does not need to be responsible for the entire API Management Lifecycle.

Trusted technology research firms agree that API industry trends are shifting towards more composable architecture, enabling scalable digital programs.

Most recently, Mark O’Neil, Gartner Chief of Research for Software Engineering had this to say on the topic:

The End of Full Life Cycle API Management

Visitors to our Gartner rating and review site will have noticed an important change: Full Life Cycle API Management is “transitioning to API management”. What does this mean and why is it important?

There are two broad reasons for this change:

1. Organizations are moving away from broad suites that cover API planning, API design, API testing, API gateway, API portal, and API lifecycle management. Instead, they are combining vendor tools, e.g. an API testing tool from one vendor, and an API gateway from another. This is what Erik Wilde has called the “great unbundling”. This means that our 2023 Magic Quadrant in this area will be the Magic Quadrant for API Management (no more “Full Life Cycle”), which focuses on the core requirements of managing APIs. These APIs may be designed in a different tool, tested using a different tool, or versioned using a different tool. That is simply how modern API management works.

2. API Gateways have changed. At my API Days keynotes in Paris and New York, I described the “Gatewaysaurus”. The Gatewaysaurus is what came about when API gateways became bloated with functionality, and customers used them as Swiss Army Knives of integration. Nowadays, the trend is towards low-footprint, distributed API gateways which are focused on the core requirements of security, monitoring, and traffic routing. These are included in our Market Guide for API Gateways. Very often, these API Gateways are part of the API platform itself. So at Gartner we challenge vendors to implement “Bring your own gateway” API management, including where API Management must span different API gateways. John Santoro and I also introduced Federated API Gateways onto the 2023 Hype Cycle for APIs, with the entry written by Paul Dumas.

Disparate Environments, Image by Author

Within digital ecosystems, how does a breakdown in communication between Business Units occur, and why is it directly related to poor API Management?

1. Unified Vision, Fragmented Execution:
   Large enterprises often start digital transformation projects with a clear, unified vision. They aim to centralize data, create interoperable systems, and build a cohesive digital ecosystem.
2. Communication Breakdown:
   As organizations grow, different departments or BUs might adopt varied API management tools, protocols, and standards. This diversity can lead to communication silos, making it difficult for systems to talk to each other and for teams to collaborate effectively.
3. Complex Integrations:
   Disparate API solutions across BUs can lead to integration nightmares. In the absence of standardization, connecting systems becomes complex, often requiring custom solutions, leading to higher costs and inefficiencies.
4. Rediscovering Unity:
   To overcome integration challenges, enterprises often look to API gateways, unified portals, and middleware solutions. These tools aim to bridge the communication gap, allowing diverse systems to interact seamlessly.
5. Importance of Governance:
   In a large enterprise, without proper governance, API management can become chaotic. It’s essential to have guidelines, best practices, and governance frameworks to ensure smooth operations and maintain security.

In enterprise API management, while innovation and growth are important, organizations should have checks and balances with effective communication, collaboration, and governance to achieve the intended outcomes.

How does a Multi-Gateway API Portal help accelerate digital transformation efforts and optimize the API consumer experience?

1. Unified Access Point:
   Multi-gateway API portals provide a single entry point for API consumers, streamlining access to a many APIs spread across different gateways, simplifying the discovery process.
2. Consistent Experience:
   Even with multiple underlying gateways, these portals create a consistent user experience, offering a standardized documentation and API consumption processes.
3. Centralized Monitoring & Analytics:
   Such portals can provide analytics from various gateways, creating a holistic view of API consumption patterns, usage metrics, and potential bottlenecks.
4. Seamless Integration:
   Multi-gateway portals facilitate smoother integrations, bridging the gap between various gateways and ensuring interoperability between them without the need for custom solutions.
5. Enhanced Security Protocols:
   With a unified front, these portals can enforce consistent and robust security measures across all API gateways, ensuring that consumers interact within a safe environment.
6. Facilitated Collaboration:
   By reducing fragmentation, these portals foster better collaboration between API producers and consumers, aiding in feedback collection, iterative improvements, and shared best practices.
7. Future-proofing & Scalability:
   Multi-gateway portals are built to accommodate the addition of new gateways and technologies, ensuring enterprises remain agile and can scale their API ecosystems without major overhauls.
8. Empowerment through Self-Service:
   With a unified interface, API consumers can leverage self-service tools to test, subscribe to, and monitor APIs, reducing the dependency on producers and speeding up development cycles.
9. Cost Efficiency:
   By minimizing the need for custom integration solutions and fostering efficient API consumption, such portals can lead to significant cost savings in the long run.
10. Reinforcing Governance & Best Practices:
    Centralized portals reinforce organizational governance policies, ensuring that even with diverse gateways, API production and consumption remain within defined guidelines, bolstering operational efficiency.

A multi-gateway API portal supports the entire API ecosystem, and can accelerate digital transformation efforts while ensuring a unified experience for API consumers.

Having a composable and scalable architecture can help mitigate the “Tower of Babel” effect so often seen in large enterprise.

API Portals can be used for internal developers to reuse existing code, partnership opportunities, or for external developers to build new software or applications on your data and services.

Cheers!