Bringing High Speed to the Next Level with Internal APIs
Transcrição
Bringing High Speed to the Next Level with Internal APIs
CASE STUDY Bringing High Speed to the Next Level with Internal APIs CASE STUDY Bringing High Speed to the Next Level with Internal APIs Company Size Enterprise Industry Media + Entertainment / Telecommunications API Program TYPE Private (Internal + Partner) Goals of API Program Replace legacy systems with a centralized database of RESTful APIs Reduce technical debt with traffic management Eliminate partner onboarding pains Facilitate data sharing among departments Results Efficiently runs traffic both through the cloud and on-premise via Mashery API Management Partner onboarding went from weeks to hours OAuth 2.0 Accelerator ensures secure data exchanges Internal data sharing went from hours or days to less than 30 minutes A leader in the media and entertainment space, Comcast has replaced legacy systems with an efficient and comprehensive internal API program that spans departments within the company. With more than 80 APIs and counting, Comcast has cut its onboarding time for third-party partners and improved data sharing among internal developers, resulting in innovative apps that satisfy customers on any device. Leading Innovation in Media and Entertainment Comcast is one of the world’s leading media, entertainment, and communications companies serving more than 50 million customers across the United States. In order to create the world’s best entertainment and online experiences, part of the Comcast vision is to drive innovation. However, as an enterprise with more than 125,000 employees around the country, it became difficult to streamline the technological processes that keep Comcast on the cutting edge of consumer media products. Developers in the company were increasingly pulling resources from different parts of the enterprise to improve the customer experience. Relying on disparate legacy systems, this process became lengthy and inefficient. “Comcast has been in the high speed business for years, and we needed our internal operations to reflect that,” says Hai Thai, Senior Engineer at Comcast. Historically, Comcast had employed VPNs to create new services and to onboard partners. “Integrating with third-party vendors used to be very painful,” says Thai. “We would have to build new data centers internally, plus create VPNs and private networks from scratch just for one integration. Plus, VPNs were not reusable.” As Thai says, it could take more than four weeks to complete one integration. 2 CASE STUDY The infrastructure also lacked a centralized database to track VPNs and datacenters created among the different departments at Comcast, resulting in double the work and low efficiency. “We’re in a highly competitive marketplace where everything happens fast,” says Thai. “We decided to turn to RESTful APIs to transition to a much quicker, more efficient model.” Satisfying Enterprise and Consumer Needs with APIs Comcast created CodeBig, its internal API platform, and began developing APIs to replace some of its legacy channels. Yet, the team knew that if it did not implement API management, the company could easily fall into the same pitfalls it had with VPNs. “We’re a very big company with hundreds of thousands of people working on a multitude of different projects,” says Thai. “We knew API management could help us centralize all of our APIs and reduce a lot of the technical debt and doublework we’d been experiencing.” Adopting a centralized platform would also aid in fostering a strong internal developer community and avoiding overlap in work. Lastly, Comcast needed a secure solution to quickly onboard third-party partners. An API Program with Scalability Baked In One of CodeBig’s requirements was a truly distributed API management solution, meaning traffic running simultaneously through Mashery’s enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure and on-premise via Mashery Local. “We knew we needed a hybrid solution so we could have the best of both worlds: the flexibility of the cloud, coupled with the security and improved performance of on-premise,” says Thai. With Mashery, Comcast controls and monitors its API traffic from one central dashboard, and can quickly and easily shift APIs from one deployment infrastructure to the other. With its traffic controlled, Comcast can focus on optimizing its APIs to increase efficiency among developers. “APIs allow Comcast to offer new and better services to our customers fast,” adds Thai, “it’s all about saving time.” Comcast began developing enterprise APIs to streamline data sharing among divisions that became increasingly necessary to create the apps that consumers demand. For instance, a customer-facing app might pull data about a subscriber’s usage information plus program listings to produce information tailored to each user. Each API reduces the amount of time it takes for developers to access this data and code and is also a reusable resource. What used to take several hours or days, developers at Comcast can now do in less than 30 minutes. Aiding this efficiency is Comcast’s centralized portal that houses all of its APIs. The portal is a onestop shop for APIs from every department within the company, and each group issues and manages its own keys. Comcast’s APIs have been so successful among its developers, partly because they have such easy access to them via the portal, that CodeBig has grown tremendously from the dozen APIs with which it began. “With more than 80 APIs, Mashery allows us to manage our program with fewer resources, which allows us to scale much quicker,” says Thai. “And the centralized portal ensures we don’t have 80 more of the same.” The portal has facilitated the development of an arsenal of apps, including Xfinity Connect, which gives Comcast customers access to their Comcast email, voicemail, and text messages, and Xfinity TV Sports Remote, which allows users to record games and get live scores from any device. Comcast also uses its APIs to integrate with third-party partners to produce new and innovative consumer experiences in a secure way. Comcast uses the Mashery OAuth 2.0 Accelerator to ensure secure data exchanges between partners and with its customers. And with APIs, the appropriate data can be shared instantly. “Comcast went from about four weeks’ lead time to just a few hours to onboard partners,” says Thai. “With more than 80 APIs, Mashery allows us to manage our program with fewer resources, which allows us to scale much quicker.” –Hai Thai Senior Engineer This speed allows the company to create more partnerships faster, thus satisfying customers’ needs for new features quickly and cost-effectively. One of Comcast’s latest third-party integrations is Xfinity text messaging (XTM). With XTM, anyone who has a landline running through Comcast can get free text messaging. What typically would have required building an operating center plus a VPN to onboard the SMS provider now only needs an API, boiling down the workload to just a couple of hours. 3 CASE STUDY The Future Is Open As more and more APIs are developed internally, CodeBig claims a growing presence within the Comcast enterprise. Thai says, “With CodeBig, we have a chance to drive the standards of the company’s potential.” In the future, Thai sees more creative partner integrations so Comcast can continue to provide the best user experiences possible, plus the chance of opening some of its data by externalizing a few APIs. “The possibilities are endless with CodeBig,” says Thai. “Whenever we’re ready, we can open data with our platform in the future.” Global Headquarters 3307 Hillview Avenue Palo Alto, CA 94304 +1 650-846-1000 TEL +1 800-420-8450 +1 650-846-1005 FAX www.tibco.com TIBCO Software empowers executives, developers, and business users with Fast Data solutions that make the right data available in real time for faster answers, better decisions, and smarter action. Over the past 15 years, thousands of businesses across the globe have relied on TIBCO technology to integrate their applications and ecosystems, analyze their data, and create real-time solutions. Learn how TIBCO turns data—big or small—into differentiation at www.tibco.com. ©2015, TIBCO Software Inc. All rights reserved. TIBCO, the TIBCO logo, TIBCO Software, the Two-Second Advantage, and TIBCO Mashery are trademarks or registered trademarks of TIBCO Software Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other product and company names and marks in this document are the property of their respective owners and mentioned for identification purposes only. 09/22/15 4