In addition to the conference events, apidays hosts a news website, webinars, podcasts, publishes reports and leads initiatives focused on supporting women in the API industry and encouraging sustainable IT practices in the API sector.
Methodology
Platformable’s data analyst team regularly analyzes the API industry and identifies new and emerging tools to include.
Data in the API Landscape is sourced from three main sources:
1
Platformable reviews the tool’s website and documentation, scans LinkedIn for headcount, calculates the diversity of founding and management teams, and categorizes the tools according to the below taxonomy.
2
Crunchbase data is used to identify the founders, and key financing metrics ( total funding to date, last funding date and any IPO data if relevant).
3
Crowd-sourced updates: API tool providers themselves contribute to the datasets by completing a form, which is reviewed by Platformable’s data analyst team and then added to the database.
In addition, logos are sourced either from the tool providers directly or from the Clearbit logo tool.
Taxonomy
The revised API industry taxonomy was introduced in 2023 to reflect current and expected growth across the API industry. It was created by Mehdi Medjoaui (apidays) and Mark Boyd (Platformable).
Mehdi Medjoaui
Founder of apidays
Mark Boyd
Director at Platformable
The model draws on an understanding of ecosystem models to identify all API-related components that are typically accessed and used as value is generated in the use of APIs.
This includes compliance starting points such as regulations that may mandate the use of APIs, data and API governance practices aimed at using APIs consistently and strategically, API specifications and tools to define and create APIs, common (often cloud-based) infrastructure used in API deployments, source code, design and other tooling to create APIs, developer resources to support API use, API consumption tooling, and Product APIs that are used as composable resources in a wider value chain. API knowledge providers such as media, researchers, and associations are also recognised.
The taxonomy has been created to align with other models of describing the API industry, including Postman’s API landscape, Gartner’s API Lifecycle Management, and the API lifecycle model described by Medjaoui, Wilde, Mitra & Amundsen in Continuous API Management. A matrix showing the alignment and diversification of the models is provided below:
Technical Deployment
The API Landscape tool was designed by Rebeca Vittorazo and built by Alexei Garban and Leon Cangini and is maintained by Platformable. It is based on a dataset currently maintained in Airtable, and integrated via Google Sheets (using Coupler) to a Netlify frontend single page app, with the backend hosted on Digital Ocean.