[Editor’s note: This is a part of a series of blog posts summarizing the proceedings from the recent Nordic Tour.]

While recently touring with us, Tom Burnell, Senior Solution Architect at Axway, talked about how enterprise architects, IT managers and application developers need to address the shift to omni-channel clients and multi-platform development using APIs. By making this transition to APIs, these IT professionals can help their companies be more agility and responsive to the changing demands of the market.

In his presentation, Managing Internal, Partner and Public APIs, Tom spoke about:

• Application and partner integrations are often the main reason why B2B companies start using APIs.
• Security is important, even for internal APIs. Enforce a registration system and build in API rate limiting so even if not enforcing, you can see how your API is being used and discuss usage patterns with partners if necessary
• Documentation is essential to drive developer adoption of your API, even with partners. Minimal documentation should include API descriptions, what parameters are optional, what security protocols are used, examples of request responses and code samples.
• Even if starting with private (internal) or partner APIs, there is great value in designing your APIs with the view to making them public in the future, as you will learn lessons from the ‘other side of the fence’ and better appreciate how your end users are consuming your APIs.

His presentation in Copenhagen was recorded and is available on YouTube.

His slides are available in the Nordic APIs Slideshare stream.

Thanks again to Tom and Axway for a great presentation and for helping make the Nordic Tour so great!