Max Katz

Two weeks ago I attended and presented at the awesome API Strategy and Practice conference in Chicago. Many sessions were recorded so you can watch them when you have time. My session: Using cloud tools to build enterprise mobile apps with APIs fast was part of the Enterprise track:

Enterprise APIs need to both deliver value and deal with the tough constraints of the enterprise environment. These talks cover different dimensions of how to navigate the constraints and generate genuine progress for the enterprise by deploying APIs.

The track included industry leaders:

• Michael Morowitz (@mmorowitz), Senior Technology Director at R/GA
• Laura Heritage (@heritagelaura), Director of API Strategy at SOA Software
• Richard Mendis (@anypresence), Chief Product Officer at AnyPresence

and was moderated by Mark Cheshire (@MarkCheshire), 3Scale COO.

I started my talk by explaining that enterprises today face a number of problems: 1) IT cannot keep up with demand for mobile apps; 2) you can’t wait 12-18 months to deliver a mobile apps; 3) the first version of a mobile app has to be delivered in a few weeks (if not days) and then constantly updated.  To demonstrate my points further, I have used quotes from industry leaders that you can view in this slide deck:

 

Appery.io cloud development platform solves these problems.  Appery.io makes building enterprise mobile apps with any APIs very fast, entirely in the cloud. To demonstrate this, I used Twilio API to build a one-page mobile app where you can send SMS messages to any phone number. The app was built in under 5 minutes.

I first built the app UI using the visual drag and drop editor:

Then I quickly created a REST service that sends an SMS message using Twilio API:

Any service can be quickly tested right in Appery.io app builder:

Once the service has been created and tested, it is added to the page and mapped to the page using a visual binding editor:

The apps is then instantly tested:

You are then just a few seconds away from packaging the app for iOS, Android, Windows Phone or publishing as a mobile web app:

After the session,  Mark Cheshire quickly replied to one of my tweets:

The next API Strategy and Practice is going to be held in Berlin in Spring 2015. I definitely recommend this conference to learn about the API ecosystem.