The platformification of business offers immense potential, but much of it is being left untapped. No doubt companies see internal benefits from their own APIs, which they might open up to select external partners. Yet, even in this API-centric world, consuming another party’s API is entered with relative skepticism, especially when that API resides on a critical path. Developers want to use APIs, but software architects need to be convinced.

API providers must be able to answer these criticisms in order to gain significant adoption from companies of all sizes: reliability, including uptime and latency; data ownership and privacy; control over how the service operates; and most of all, the architects need to be convinced your company will survive—and that if you fail, they won’t fail with you.

Adam DuVander shares tales from the hockey stick of API growth to the trenches of some of today’s best developer-focused companies.