API trends to discover in 2022
Tags: api, apiintegrations, saas, cloud
Published: 2022-02-08 22:06:29

The world of APIs is evolving at a higher pace and there are some important trends to pay attention to this year.


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/nryzj5ykb2olj0ila20j.jpg)
 
Here are the top ten API trends:

**Economy growth**

The API economy is not just about selling access to your APIs and data, it is far more than this.

1. Changing landscape of how enterprises are organizing their teams, resources, and budgets.
2. The entire supply chain being power-driven by APIs
3. Ordering food to having it delivered to your doorstep
4. Requesting a cab and tracking it from beginning to end
5. Streaming channels and shows to televisions, computers, and mobile phones around the world
6. Ordering groceries and having them delivered from the store to your door.

APIs are just the enablers and the gateway to the digital or physical products that you are creating. They are what enables your business to engage with consumers in the digital world. APIs are how your products are viewed and gives great consumer insights into their buying behavior.
 
In order to be very competitive in the API market, organizations are increasingly adopting “API-first” strategies. They are realizing that their APIs are a product, and not just an add-on to their existing products. Such decisions to put budget and resources behind their API teams will allow them to succeed in 2022.
 
**API-led modernization**
 
APIs are driving the modernization of businesses across all verticals. Mainframe and legacy systems can be a big dependency for many companies. We are seeing an increase in the number of businesses using APIs and API platforms to replace or extend the capabilities of their legacy systems.
 
**Integration experience**
 
A lot can be said about the user-developer experience in terms of APIs, API documentation, developer portals and artifacts.
 
The expectations that users and developers have when they go by to integrate with an API product has had a corresponding growth.
 
API products and portfolios require to :
Be intuitive
Be well-documented
Have a self-service developer portal
Offer a great onboarding experience 
Have consistent error messaging
Have great UX and aesthetics
Provide a great analytics
Include code samples and Postman scripts
 
To get an edge on your competition, it is mandatory to have a great developer and user experience for your APIs and integrations. 
 
**Open API standards**
 
Open integration and API standards are being adopted at an increasing rate. It is recommended to get involved with the groups that support these standards and participate in the process of growing the API community. If you are consuming and using these standards, make sure to keep up to date with the changes to ensure you are producing and integrating with APIs in the best possible way.
 
Take a look below at some of the open standard communities in the past year:

OpenAPI Specification (v3.0.3)
GraphQL Specification(October 2021 edition)
JSON Schema Specification (2020-12)
AsyncAPI Specification (v2.2.0)
 
**API Best Practices**
 
Often best practices might have conflicting messages or be vague as to lead to branches of differing micro best practices.
 
Best practices include many API topics including :
API design
API security
API integrations
API transformations
Logging and tracing
Code and design linting
Error handling
Monetization
Onboarding
Observation
Analytics
Documentation
Testing / audits
Bulk data handling
Eventing 
Scalability
 
**API and Integration automation**
 
The goal of automation is not to replace workers but to allow workers to focus on more important tasks.
Keep a look out for an increase in:

Automation for API design with various no-code solutions
Automation with API Integrations
Automation in API creation
Automation for API Management and Governance
Advancements in automation for API Security
 
**Adaptive API management**

Managing the entire API lifecycle can be a challenge. Every organization is different and often the requirements can be complex. You need to adapt quickly to changes in the market, in government regulations, in technology, and even how or where people work.
 
Whether you are adapting new API policy requirements, API security threats, API integration requirements or API consumer or partner opportunities, the need for an adaptive API management system is increasing tremendously.
 
Hence, 2022 will see a continued growth of adaptive API management systems that provide a robust and holistic approach to API management. Some organizations require on-premises solutions, others want cloud-based SaaS solutions. But many will need something in-between with a mix of both.
 
**Seamless integration solutions**
 
2022 will see the need for seamless API integrations that scale even further with solid and proven integration tools standing out from the rest because of their smooth and seamless handling of integration processes, both on-premises and in the cloud. This increased demand for secure integrations with other API systems, organizations require and need products that can remove any hassles from their integration experience.
 
**API cybersecurity**
 
API security and cybersecurity is critical to every organization. Organizations are working on their understanding and proper implementation of encryption to protect their data.
 
Everything from storage and transmission of data needs a critical security eye when planning and implementing DevOps security. Privacy is also directly related as API cybersecurity is essential to securing the privacy of users and employees. Not only does data need to be secured but at times the best decision is not to store the data at all. There are many government regulations surrounding privacy in certain parts of the world, but security and privacy requirements can also have a strategy that reduces unnecessary data to protect both consumers and enterprises.
 
API cybersecurity as it is important to understand what is at risk, and how to protect and defend your APIs or other systems from various attacks.
 
**Composable APIs**
 
You will start to see more enterprises that may forego the building part, or all of, an API and instead composing a new API together from existing to add features instead of internally building new and using existing [SaaS services](https://www.taggedweb.com/).
 
Composable APIs have the potential to reap the benefits from both the flexibility of a custom-built API and the seamlessness of a SaaS API subscription or service. Consumable APIs are heavily driven by the no-code SaaS and on-premises API integration solutions that exist today