NOVEMBER 2018CIOAPPLICATIONS.COM9The move to distributed integration and containers opens the door to using the entire hybrid cloud estate to run enterprise softwareIt's a significant change to the enterprise when agile integration capabilities can be "dropped into" the infrastructure to enhance and accelerate the creation of new services. That change is complemented by the APIs themselves adapting over time, with these evolutions used to build new services, and by container creation becoming accessible to anyone developing software, at least for testing purposes. It's a matter of thinking of containers, distributed integration, and APIs as capabilities within the organization that can be spun up at any point by anyone who needs to do it. Tooling for automating these capabilities ultimately will be critical to the success of agile integration. Even in its early stages, though, building the APIs essential to agile integration can create more opportunities for digital teams to feel that they are real contributors to the organization. That allows developers to take ownership of the APIs they generate, and indeed treat them as products for users--who they should start to think of as their customers. That's what happened at a large Asia-Pacific airline, a Red Hat customer. It was having a hard time holding on to talent due to constant complaints and frustration by users over delays in delivering new services because of the lack of reusable integrations. Things changed when APIs became part of the picture. Now that APIs are seen as an "owned" product by digital teams, they are very conscious of documenting each one for their customers; of providing a roadmap description for it about how long it will be supported and when it will change; and transmitting how notifications related to the API will be handled. That creates a more collaborative relationship between API owners and users, and it speaks to building a healthier computing environment by acknowledging the reality of ongoing change for all participants in the enterprise.What's nextRight now, we see that CIOs have great interest in the potential of agile integration, but there is some concern about the costs of taking this approach. To manage this, a good starting point is to use agile integration as a blueprint design template for few projects, already on the roadmap. Once honed in that environment and the benefits realized, it can be rolled out to other activities. Those benefits should include getting greater development efficiency without having to expand the team. With these individuals feeling that their work resonates throughout the enterprise, they'll likely be happier at their jobs and more productive. Taking on an initial project or two should also demonstrate how APIs which open up silos to digital teams via more flexible, robust, visible, and accessible interfaces should create a less fragile IT environment. By starting with a few projects, even the initial benefits realized by the organization are likely to convince CIOs to bring all the components together in the end.
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