When launching and managing your API, many companies choose to do all the work themselves, unaware that are service providers available to help you plan, deploy, launch and manage your API infrastructure and ecosystem. To help bring awareness, I wanted to take a few moments and do a roundup of API service providers.
Millions of small businesses use QuickBooks for accounting and invoicing, but for many a view of customer data ends there. A partnership between QuickBooks maker Intuit and enterprise software-as-a-service company Salesforce looks to bring more insights to small business customers. To connect the seemingly disparate worlds in which the companies operate, they’re using their APIs, namely the Intuit Data Service API.
For at least thirty years, people have talked about the “paperless office.” With cloud-based services, it may finally be possible. Yet, for many organizations, a major hang-up is contracts, which require ink signatures. In our first public API report, sponsored by DocuSign, we looked at electronic signature platforms. Specifically, we examined the features and developer friendliness of e-signature APIs, which allow non-ink signatures to be automated and integrated into business processes. Without a doubt, e-signatures are a growing field, as evidenced by the recent acquisition of EchoSign by Adobe.
Cashboard appears to be a full featured and mature time-tracking and invoicing system. It’s been about 9 months since the company opened its system up with its Cashboard API in beta, which continues to this day. The customer testimonials are quite persuasive and could lead to removing that manual Excel spreadsheet approach from the equation. After all, we’re much more web savvy, right?
Developers with their own geographic imagery will soon be able to publish it as a layer on the Google Maps API and Google Earth API. Dubbed Google Earth Builder, the service will launch in the third quarter. From the looks of the announcement here at Where 2.0 conference, Google is dipping its toe into the traditional GIS industry. The maps developers upload will be available via API, but only to enterprise customers who pay Google for geo services.
Athletic shoe and apparel giant Nike recently announced that it is looking for a fellow to help ignite an open data revolution within the company. Nike’s vice President of Sustainability, Hannah Jones, announced the fellowship and a partnership with Code for America during a session at SXSW 2011. Nike has exposed internal data in the past and hopes to create a situation where other companies might follow suite for a greener future.
TribeHR, a software-as-a-service human resources solution, is bringing powerful API integration into the HR industry on multiple fronts. TribeHR co-founder Joseph Fung explained to us at SWSXi how APIs fit into the company’s overall strategy:
Online invoicing and time tracking service FreshBooks has a revolutionary new feature for developers using its FreshBooks API: an opportunity to make money through the company’s current customer base. Through the program, developers can charge users a monthly fee, which is tacked on to what subscribers are already paying FreshBooks. The solution, another revenue stream for FreshBooks and a rare one for developers, marks a potential new approach for software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies and one FreshBooks thinks has a bright future.
Last month saw the first-ever “Small Business Saturday” (at least according to American Express, the initiative’s sponsor). Small business get plenty of attention in terms of their finances, but what about their web application needs? The Small Business Web is “a directory of web apps to help small business bloom and grow.” The site was founded about two years ago by FreshBooks (invoicing), MailChimp (email marketing), BatchBlue (customer relationship management), Outright (accounting), and Shoeboxed (receipt management). It now lists dozens of applications across several more categories.
Over the past few months at PW we’ve noticed steady increase in the number of mentions of Data as a Service (DaaS) and this trend looks to continue. Our first post on the subject was by a guest author Pete Soderling who introduced us to the concept and discussed pricing models. Then we continued the theme by posting about a partnership between a stock data site and an open data platform, working together to deliver a stock historical data API. The latest big move in this area sees NASDAQ creating a Data-On-Demand service accessible through a Web API.
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