Commerce Talk

APIs In Action: How They Work

Greg Foster, Director of Sales, walks us through the secret sauce that makes it so that different pieces of software can communicate with each other: APIs.

Modern enterprise technical architecture relies heavily on application programming interfaces or APIs. But what is an API? Greg breaks a complicated-sounding bit of technology down into an easy-to-understand explanation. Watch and enjoy!

Transcript

Hi! Greg here from Acro Commerce diving into another episode of our Commerce Talk Series, where we break down tech topics in a few minutes or less.

For today's topic, I'm going to be unpacking a term that might sound complex or even a bit confusing, but it's actually fairly simple. 

I'm going to be talking about APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), but before I dive into what an API is, I'd like to first touch on what an API does. I feel a great example to visualize APIs in action is to actually look at all the apps installed on your phone. They were all developed by various development teams, often using different code languages and yet they seamlessly integrate with one another and communicate back and forth. 

How is this possible? Well, this is API in action. 

It's the API that's acting as a bridge and facilitating communication between your apps by defining the way they can interact. You can think of it as a contract of sorts that developers agree upon for different programs to exchange information. 

In the context of ecommerce, an API allows your online store to connect with other systems, such as a payment processor or Inventory management tools. It specifies the commands your app or website can use to request and receive data from other sources. 

Now, the power of APIs really gets exciting when you start looking at modern decoupled ecommerce environments where systems like ERPs and CMSs utilize APIs to integrate with each other seamlessly and, more importantly, operate completely independently from one another.

It's this independence that makes a huge impact on the overall scalability of the tech stack. For example, if one system is no longer the best fit, let's say the CMS, it can be swapped out fairly easily and replaced by a new CMS without affecting the other systems in the tech stack. This flexibility and lack of disruption really empower companies to be far more innovative with their systems and their solutions.

In summary, APIs can be thought of as the glue that ties different systems and applications together. They enable collaboration and scalability, and they truly drive innovation.

So, if you're curious about anything about APIs or anything else in our ecommerce series, drop us a line at Acro Commerce.

This is Greg signing off. Thanks again for your time.

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