API Evangelist Conversation with Reza Shafii, Product Executive At Kong

Hey, Ken. My name is Reza. Reza Shafi. I’ve been in the API world for At least 15 years.

Yeah, listen that the relationship between apis and integrations has always been something i’ve been fascinated to it. That was at milsoft about 12 years ago Um, yeah 13 years ago now, uh where I I was in, you know, when they were 80 people company I was in charge with their esp Um, and we also entered the api market and I think looking back in 13 years kin You Um, that the point I was making in a, in a, uh, in a LinkedIn post was that I think that integrations as we have known them as we did it in the middle soft days, 13 years ago, are gone. So like, they’re, they’re no longer, it doesn’t make sense to have them the way they were. It’s all, it’s all stuff that doesn’t make sense because of API as an AI.

Yeah. And I think what’s interesting in the comments is a lot of people say integrations are not dead. Of course, we will continue to need to build integration. So what are integrations is when you need to connect multiple systems to achieve a specific task, that’s typically an integration. You know, the example I used in my diagram is, you know, when particular system A’s employee data changes, make sure you update system B’s employee, right? And I think most of us have had to lead projects or integrations. develop projects like this. Uh, the question is what? How has this been typically done? It’s typically been done with integration language with run on ESPs before recently. You know, in the last 5 10 years, they’ve been running on I pass on this integration. Languages are kind of domain specific languages [00:03:00] that are composed of three things. Connectors, uh, data transformation tools and orchestrations, right? Uh, and they, it’s a multi billion dollar domain. And what I’m saying is that we don’t really need those domain specific languages anymore. Uh, all you need is great APIs and AI code. If you have those two things, You don’t need those really expensive iPaaS layers anymore.

I think, you know, it can be any of it. I define it as a well defined interface that’s well documented that you can read the docs for and write code that’s going to use it. Most of them nowadays are RESTful. More and more, there’s asynchronous event based APIs. But then, yes, at the lower level, gRPC and so [00:04:00] on as well. But most of the time, let’s say 80 percent plus, you’re going to have to deal with RESTful APIs, as you know.

Right. So, um, I think that the role of the gateway is better thought of as the role of. how you do your API programs, right? So the big question everyone was talking about was, well, you’re saying it’s a big if, if you have well defined, reliable, secure APIs that you can easily discover. I agree. It’s a big if, but I have to tell you what I notice is You have enterprises who are taking that seriously and are doing a good job in having [00:05:00] discoverable, you know, easy to find and well documented, reliable APIs and those who are not quite there yet, right? And so the role of the gateways, it’s just, it’s like a piece of the puzzle, right? Which is it enables secure, reliable APIs. Uh, but. Uh, the program is much more important. How do you make sure that you have these APIs? You use tools like the gateway and it can management tools. Do you have a program that enables this? And again, I see companies that have it and companies that are not quite there.

What I’m seeing is not a lack of Tools or specs or utilities to make that happen. The bigger challenge is, are you, is your company looking at it strategically, right? And is it, is it investing in the people to make that happen, right? And if you don’t, Then it’s not, it’s not necessary. It’s not just gonna happen by itself, right? And there are ways to do that in a federated way. You don’t want to centralize top down it, right? Um, one thing I would say, Kendi, to talk about AI, I think AI makes this need much more important, right? Because in order for AI to be very effective, you need to have discoverable interfaces to, for AI to use. Guess what? If you [00:07:00] didn’t, if you don’t invest in this, then, then your AI programs are going to be a lot harder to get off the ground, right? And that’s integration is a special case of the new world of integration is going to need these APIs to be discoverable. Uh, I think,

I think if you bring it at the highest level, if you have. This well defined APIs and you’re able to leverage a I on top of it on really your general digital transformation programs. Then it’s a matter of being one of the best or just being one of the, you know, uh, bottom layers of the [00:08:00] of the of the business. I think one of the I was reading a case study on United. United is outdoing the airline industry both on, uh, you know, financial revenue and NPS significantly. There’s MIT study on that. You can Google it and find it. How did they do that? Uh, well, I would argue that if you read, it’s all because they have great API programs, right? They’ve been able to create Experiences with their mobile app with the way they do things like, for example, letting, you know, as soon as you land, where are the gates floors? That’s like, where do you go pick up the next one? They’re even able to do like micro delays of airplanes to make sure that people don’t miss it. Yeah. Yeah. Their flights, right? Uh, and these are the things that you can do because you have discoverable, reliable, secure, well defined APIs. Uh, and, um, AI is just not going to accelerate their journey on that. Uh, and then you see airlines, you know, that are not having that type of experience [00:09:00] and they will struggle in the business world.

Federated governance is what I see now happening a lot more, right, which is give as much autonomy as you can to the different teams while creating a developer platform that allows self service access to the things that you want to make sure you guardrail for, right? And on the API angle, this comes to what are the policies you want to put out there? You want to make sure it. that they follow to verify their documentation, to verify their security posture on. Make sure you you enforce that as deployment time, but ensure that they follow the right guardrails. But as much as possible architectural freedom. You know, if you think about the old world of [00:10:00] I pass or pass, sorry, that’s, uh, the the, uh, foundry is just big black box. Don’t worry. Give us your. One way of doing it, and usually it’s Java, and, you know, we will make sure it’s everything taken care of. That’s disappearing, I think. People want to choose their programming language, even sometimes the deployment target, their cloud sometimes. But then make sure that you give them guardrails so that they don’t, they don’t do the wrong things around security, around documentation of their APIs and so on. That’s federated governance, and I see a lot of great organizations that have been doing that.

Yeah, I think so. I think what, what, what the better title would have been integrations as we’ve known them so far are dead and a new generation of types of integration is happening. Of course, it’s way too long and it’s not as catchy and probably not as many people would have read it. So, uh, hence the initial title. But, um, uh, that’s 100 percent this is related to governance now is how do you govern specifically your APIs?

Well, right now, I think, You know, a lot of first of all, I’m sure you’re observing the same thing, right? Is that, uh, history repeats itself, right? A lot of stuff we’ve seen is coming back in slightly different form. Uh, but it’s good to see the new generation thinking about this stuff. And in some ways with beginner eyes and rethinking it, but also seeing some of the stuff that maybe you and I have seen and they’re going, you know, I, I, I’m just going to pick an example to try Uh, you know, it was something that I remember Swagger had out there. What is that? 13, 14 years ago, right? That was in Swagger UI, you know? Yeah. And at the time, I remember everyone was like, wow, this is cool. But it seems like it kind of disappeared, and I now see a new generation of folks going, wow, this tried thing would be cool. And it’s, it is cool, but it was also cool 14 years ago. So, so there are things that we’ve done before, and [00:13:00] I think new, new generations. So, what, I, I digress. What excites me the most right now is, This new generation of teams, leveraging AI in their hand. I think AI is a game changer, especially around AI code. There’s so many tools that allow you to increase your velocity of development significantly. And the importance that APIs will play in this world. I think it’s huge.