Finland planning API-economy expert training in universities

APIs and API economy are rising themes is Finland now in multiple fronts. This in turn has raised question of skilled API development and innovation workforce. The term API economy (application programming interface economy) is a catchphrase coined to describe the growing economic force of application programming interfaces (APIs). An API is a customer interface for technology products that allows software components to communicate. There was a time when seemingly only software professionals knew about APIs. Nowadays, business leaders are aware of the financial impact APIs can have. The awereness is hitting Finland as well.

X-Road — our digital backbone

Finland is launching X-Road or “kansallinen palveluväylä” in November 2015. The data exchange layer X-Road is a technical and organisational environment, which enables secure Internet-based data exchange between the state’s information systems and it has been developed in Estonia.

Public and private sector enterprises and institutions can connect their information system with the X-Road via APIs. This enables them to use X-Road services in their own electronic environment or offer their e-services via the X-Road. Joining the X-Road enables institutions to save resources, since the data exchange layer already exists. This makes data exchange more effective both inside the state institutions as well as regarding the communication between a citizen and the state.

Open data APIs

In addition in the field of open data APIs are becoming one key element in utilizing open data in service and application development.

One major player in open data is The Six City Strategy. Open and Smart Services is a strategy for sustainable urban development carried out by the six largest cities in Finland: Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, Tampere, Turku and Oulu. The strategy will be carried out between 2014 and 2020 with the aim of creating new know-how, business and jobs in Finland.

The primary objective of the Six City Strategy is to strengthen Finland’s competitiveness by using the country’s six largest cities as innovation development and experimentation environments. The strategy aims to not only produce service innovations, but also to promote competitive business and employment.

Internet of Things

Internet of Things is also finally gaining more traction in Finland even if it is still relatively small compared to for example Germany. Nevertheless a lot of companies are building up solutions and platforms to use in IoT based business. Again, APIs are one fundamental element.

Need more skilled API experts — tech and business

For the above reasons some universities have started to discuss and plan API experts or **APIOps — a new breed of DevOps focused on collaborative Design-First driven API development**. Web API development has been around long time. Yet the values of Design-First driven paradigm has not been fully understood.

APIOps — devops with focus on APIs

The new paradigm has been rising and gaining more interest in global level thanks for API gurus like Kin Lance. We need to apply lean statup alike approach to API development — minimize waste and learn fast from failures. More importantly we need to find methods to engage API consumers to the process of defining APIs with collaborative online tools such as Swagger editor, RAML and API Blueprint tools.

Minimizing time to market is fundamental element of success. In this Design-First driven approach is key element because it enables automated server code, client code and always uptodate sandbox alike documentation generation. APIOps concept defines the process and tools available to apply Design-First driven development.

APItalist — strategic business thinking

I do not believe that training technical API experts is enough. We need API -strategy and API-economy understanding as well. Together APIOps and APItalists are winning combination and able to speed up API -economy in Finland. APItalist creates strategy and APIOps troops implement it. APItalist is a term coined by Ville Peltola, one of the API -economy thought leaders in Finland. I’ve been in close contact with Ville for a few years now and things start to find places. APItalist understands the rules of API-economy and value of APIs as products and tools for new kind of business networks and opportunities.

Curriculum building in process

As main creator of APIOps concept, I suggested APIOps and APItalist training in universities. Tampere University of Applied Sciences accepted the challenge and summoned me and own personnel to define curriculum for APIOps and APItalist training. The work is still on-going and we will begin from APIOps training. After that is clear, we will focus on APItalists — the value creators and API-strategists. Also other universities have expressed deep interest towards the training. It is expected that first version of API curriculum will be ready before the end of this year and training can start 2016.