AWS Taps into API Economy

At the AWS Summit conference in New York today Amazon Web Services (AWS) extended the reach of its cloud application ambitions into the realm of the API Economy.

After announcing that Looker, Qlik, Sumo Logic, and Works Applications have become the latest software-a-a-service (SaaS) application providers to host their applications on its platform, AWS announced that it is now making available an API management platform available as an AWS service.

Designed to make it simpler to build applications using a microservices architecture that leverage APIs to integrate various application components, AWS CTO Werner Vogels told conference attendees that Amazon API Gateway represents “a real game changer” in the cloud.

Intended to not make applications but also integrate them, Vogels said the Amazon API Gateway is the latest example of how AWS is moving beyond infrastructure to turn entire platforms into a programmable service.  Capable of allowing developers to create resources, attach methods and deploy APIs in a matter of minutes. Vogels said the day when IT infrastructure vendors hold IT organizations hostage are now clearly over.

In its place has emerged services such as AWS Lambda that make use of event-driven architectures to enable developers to dynamically invoke that exact amount of IT infrastructure resources required on demand. In fact, Vogels said that for all intents and purposes because all infrastructure is now code that can be invoked via an API, the concept of a server in the age of the cloud is now obsolete.

For solution providers the rise of programmable infrastructure in the cloud is a double edge sword. On the positive side of that development, the time it takes to create a new application has not only been sharply reduced, there should be more applications to integrate than ever. In fact, Vogels noted that the number of applications being developed thanks to the rise of APIs and the cloud is at an all-time high.

On the downside as more applications move into the cloud the less demand there is for IT infrastructure running on premise. Given that most solution providers still have business models that are to one degree or another still tied to reselling, configuring and implementing IT infrastructure the shift to how IT applications are delivered via the cloud can be problematic.

Over course, even Vogels concedes that it will be a hybrid cloud computing world for some time to come. But at least as far as new application development is concerned, the only viable answer from at least an AWS perspective is to build, test and ultimately deploy those applications on any one of its 11 data center regions around the globe.