The State of API Integration Report 2017 by Cloud Elements

This report helps to address the proliferaton of APIs by providing trends, insights on ease of integraton, data on where the industry is strong, and where it is going next.
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<p>Growth of APIs - 1
THE STATE OF
API INTEGRATION
REPORT
2017
Growth of APIs - 2
Happy Integrating.
Mark Geene
CEO - Cloud Elements
@mgeene
THERE HAS BEEN AN  
EXPONENTIAL PROLIFERATION OF APIs  
THROUGHOUT THE YEARS.  
Our vision at Cloud Elements is to make it faster and easier for developers to connect and work with any API. Each new service or 
application is an island of data, causing developers to be overrun with new APIs, resources and information. And with each new API, 
developers are challenged with determining how it works and what value writing to the API brings.  
 
This report helps to address the proliferation of APIs by providing trends, insights on ease of integration, data on where the industry is 
strong, and where it is going next.  
 
DATA COLLECTION METHODOLOGY 
The data presented here had been collected and analyzed between September 2016 to March 2017,  and comes from Cloud 
Elements API Integration platform. Over 107 public endpoints, 58 beta endpoints, 28,000 individual instances and 1.6 Billion+ API 
Calls were surveyed to extract the following results. In addition to the Cloud Elements platform, complementary research provided by 
ProgrammableWeb API Directory 'Growth in Web APIs Since 2005', the Datanyze Market Share Report of 2016, and SmartBear State 
of API Report 2016. Industry expert contributors include Ross Garrett, Sr. Director Product Marketing at Cloud Elements and Kin 
Lane, The API Evangelist. It will help all developers navigate the recent explosion of APIs and the implications of API integrations to 
work more efficiently in 2017 and beyond.  
 
We'll cover: 
 
 
1.  The Growth of API Integration          2.  API Integrations | Compare and Contrast          3.  Current Scorecard of API Integration
Word F m Our CEO 
word from our ceo
Growth of APIs - 3
MEET THE 
CONTRIBUTORS
Meet The Contributor
KIN   LANE
API Evangelist 
I am the API Evangelist. Not in 
the sense that I'm evangelizing 
a single API to you--In the 
sense that APIs are important 
for everyone to be aware of. I'm paying attention to not 
just the technical, but the business and politics of the 
web API movement. I share my insights by blogging on 
the business of APIs at apievangelist.com, politics of 
APIs at apivoice.com and you can find more information 
about me at kinlane.com.
ROSS   GARRETT
At Cloud Elements 
Ross Garrett is the Head of 
Product Marketing at Cloud 
Elements - responsible for 
market strategy, product 
positioning and evangelism. He is a well-known 
speaker at developer events and other industry 
conferences. Ross has over 10 years of product and 
marketing leadership experience in the integration 
space, most recently at Push Technology and 
previously with Axway, CA and Layer 7.
MARK   GEENE
CEO At Cloud Elements 
Mark Geene, co-founder &  
CEO of Cloud Elements, 
is recognized as a leading 
visionary for unifying the 
world's APIs by defining the first API Integration 
platform. This revolution of API integration is the next 
frontier in API Management as developers address 
the challenge of consuming millions of disparate 
private and public APIs. In addition, to being a pioneer 
in the API world, Mark is a well-recognized leader 
in applying the Lean Startup methodology and has 
earned awards from Outside Magazine, Apex, Stevie, 
and Denver Gazelle for his outstanding work. 
Growth of APIs - 4
table of contents
WORD FROM OUR CEO
MEET THE CONTRIBUTORS
     03
     COMPARE AND CONTRAST
20 Authentication
22 Metadata Discovey
24 Bulk
26 Events and Synchronization
27 Webhooks
     01
     INTRODUCTION
06 The State of API Integration
      Important Findings
07 A Look Ahead
     04
     API CALCULATOR
31 CRM Endpoint Scorecards
     02
     THE GROWTH OF APIS
09 SOAP Isn't Dead Yet
10 Proliferation of Public APIs
11 Demand of Cloud Services by Category  
12 Growing Demand of Emerging Category Leaders
     05
     CLOSING
36 About Cloud Elements
Table of Content
Growth of APIs - 5
INTRODUCTION
Introduction 
chapter 1
Growth of APIs - 6
THE STATE OF  
API INTEGRATION
API integration is one of the most critical aspects of application development 
today. It's not enough that your application exposes a great, developer 
friendly API, you often need to integrate the APIs exposed by other 
products and services - allowing these differing interfaces to work well 
together is fundamental to a reliable application experience for your users. 
A good example is data synchronization - where business events need to 
be communicated between products and services in a uniform way, even 
though each API offers a different integration model or data structure.
This means developers must navigate a sometimes-bewildering set 
of features and variations across different APIs, and figure out a way to 
consolidate them into one coherent, streamlined data model. With so many 
different products and services out there - each with their own APIthis API 
integration report aims to highlight the features and typical integrations you 
should design for within your applications and APIs.
introduction
Introduction 
IMPORTANT FINDINGS
This report takes a look back at the state of API integration in 2016, while providing 
guidance for the future. One area that keeps coming up year after year is the balance of 
power between SOAP and REST. There is no doubt that REST dominates today, but there's 
still a remarkable percentage of SOAP APIs out there that can't be ignored - at least 15% 
based on our experience. The report will also take a snapshot across API consumption in 
various categories over the past year - looking at this data from an enterprise integration 
perspective shows not all APIs available are used equally. The usage across these categories 
provides key information about the importance and potential growth of different sectors 
of the market.
The report will also examine specifications across different APIs, and how design decisions 
made by API product managers can have a significant impact on how easy it is for you to 
consume data from these products and services. For example, Webhooks is still a niche 
feature amongst the most commonly used APIs, despite the fact that over 80 percent 
of developers indicate they prefer using Webhooks over comparable methods. The good 
news is that marketing, document storage and e-commerce services are leading the way 
here, encouraging others to follow this trend.
...remarkable percentage of SOAP APIs out there that can't be 
ignored - at least 15% based on our experience.
Growth of APIs - 7
introduction
A LOOK AHeaD
This report also gives us an opportunity to 
look forward to 2017 and the trends that are 
set to affect APIs and application integration. 
A trend that we've come to expect over 
the past few years is around public APIs - 
they've become prolific amongst products 
and services wanting reach the "long-tail" 
of application developers. For 2017, all the 
data suggests we'll see another year of record 
growth in this segment.
Introduction 
Within enterprise integration, a need to bridge application data 
from similar types of products (E.g. CRM) is driving significant 
growth. This is occurring both within and without corporate 
IT - which is impacting the requirements placed on integration 
technologies and even the APIs themselves. For example, we see 
increased API consumption and data transformation for services in 
the CRM, marketing automation, cloud storage and e-commerce 
segments. And a growing need to simplify, speedup and automate 
common integration workflows - such as creating new CRM 
records for a purchases from new customers. 
Of course API technologies aren't standing still either. We've 
mentioned developer preference for Webhooks to handle 
asynchronous eventing between application services, and this is 
gaining a place within popular API documentation languages such 
as OpenAPI Specification v3.0. Hypermedia is also given a slight 
nod within OAS v3.0, with some basic linking capabilities being 
described. With adoption of this new specification set to takeoff 
during 2017, we can perhaps expect to see a greater understanding 
of (and appreciation for) hypermedia flows among API product 
managers.
Growth of APIs - 8
GROWTH 
OF APIs 
chapter 2
Growth of APIs - 9
SOAP ISN'T 
DEAD YET 
 
Growth of APIs 
83%
REST
vs
SOAP
15%
2%
REST
SOAP
.NET
Growth of APIs - 10
PROLIFERATION  
OF PUBLIC APIS
The proliferation of APIs is a leading indicator for the demand of API Integration. According to 
ProgrammableWeb, in a matter of 6 years, web API counts increased 758% from 2010 - 2016. 
With API Services proliferating at an accelerating pace, new and interesting challenges for developers 
continue to arise. Each API is unique, has its own resource definitions, data model schema, error 
handling, paging structure and more. 
API Management vendors have conditioned us to believe that our APIs are living on their own little 
island, and we must self-develop and publish each in order to monetize the results for company's sake. 
In reality, apps are increasingly combining your services with APIs purchased from vendors. 
Your APIs, in combination with the APIs of SaaS, PaaS, IaaS and IoT services, are building the next 
generation of Web, SaaS, Mobile and Internet of Things (IoT). These new composite apps help to 
automate workflows among multiple services, based on events and triggers. Citizen Integrators, 
comprised of customers, partners and employees, want apps to work with the other cloud services they 
use without having to spend hours learning your unique API, and composite APIs make this happen.
Growth of APIs 
Source: https://www.programmableweb.com/news/programmableweb-api-directo-
ry-eclipses-17000-api-economy-continues-surge/analysis/2017/03/13
Growth of APIs - 11
Cloud Storage
CRM
Marketing
Finance
eCommerce
Helpdesk
Messaging
Social
Database
Payments
Field Service
Human Capital
ERP
eSignature
Collaboration
Events
ID Management
Monitoring
Screening
DEMAND OF 
CLOUD SERVICES 
BY  CATEGORY 
As the demand for integration between cloud categories 
increases, the need for accompanying APIs spanning across all 
categories of cloud service continues to boom. While the majority 
of the demand for APIs fall under the Cloud Storage category, in 
mid 2015, the industry saw a spike in demand for CRM API use, 
creating the need for APIs across several cloud service categories.
Growth of APIs 
Growth of APIs - 12
GROWING DEMAND 
OF EMERGING 
CATEGORY LEADERS 
A growing demand for integration can be measured by emerging 
technologies across multiple categories. Most notably we have 
seen dramatic growth in demand for finance applications and 
helpdesk applications in the latter half of 2016.
Q3
2014
Q3
2015
Q3
2016
Q1
2015
Q1
2016
Q4
2014
Q4
2015
Q4
2016
Q2
2015
Q2
2016
90
60
30
Social
Messaging
Helpdesk
eCommerce
Finance
Marketing
CRM
Cloud Storage
Growth of APIs 
Growth of APIs - 13
CLOUD
STORAGE
Growth of APIs 
CATEGORY MARKET LEADERS
The percentage to the right represents the Cloud Storage 
and Document market share generated by Datanyze. 
It is calculated by the number of websites using given 
technology divided by the total number of websites 
using any of the technologies selected in the left column; 
websites limited to the Alexa top 1M.
Integration roadmaps are often prioritized based on 
customer demand for integrations to current software 
market leaders. A critical aspect of integration design is 
to consider who the current market leader is the space 
and ensure your application is futureproof for any new 
entrants to the market that could soon takeover.
25.2% 
14.3% 
4.8% 
4.3% 
2.9% 
2.4% 
2.4% 
1.4% 
1.0% 
1.0% 
0.5% 
0.5% 
16.2% 
21.4% 
1.9% 
Other
Growth of APIs - 14
CATEGORY MARKET LEADERS
The percentage to the left represents the CRM market share 
generated by Datanyze. It is calculated by the number of websites 
using given technology divided by the total number of websites using 
any of the technologies selected in the left column; websites limited 
to the Alexa top 1M.
Integration roadmaps are often prioritized based on customer 
demand for integrations to current software market leaders. A critical 
aspect of integration design is to consider who the current market 
leader is within the space and ensure your application is futureproof 
for any new entrants to the market that could soon takeover.
Growth of APIs
CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP 
MANAGEMENT (CRM) 
32.4% 
27.4%
13.1%
10%
4.4%
4.2%
1.7% Sugarcrm
1.1% vtiger
0.9% Pipeline
0.8% Nanorep
0.8% Insightly
0.7% NeonCRM
0.6% Telligent
0.6% Bloomerang
0.5% Higher Logic
0.2% Jive
0.2% Inbenta
Other
Growth of APIs - 15
MARKETING 
AUTOMATION
Growth of APIs 
CATEGORY MARKET LEADERS
The percentage to the right represents the Marketing 
market share generated by Datanyze. It is calculated 
by the number of websites using given technology 
divided by the total number of websites using any of the 
technologies selected in the left column; websites limited 
to the Alexa top 1M.
Integration roadmaps are often prioritized based on 
customer demand for integrations to current software 
market leaders. A critical aspect of integration design is 
to consider who the current market leader is within the 
space and ensure your application is futureproof for any 
new entrants to the market that could soon takeover.
24.7% 
21.9% 
8.4% 
6.7% 
5.4% 3.5% 
3.1% 
2.8% 
2.3% 
2.4% 
3% 
2% RD Station
1.5% SALESmangago
1.3% IBM Silverpop
1.2% ClickDimensions
1.1% Uberflip
0.7% IBM Unica
0.6% Orange Soda
0.5% Mautic
0.5% BounceExchange
0.4% Hatchbuck
0.3%  LeadFormix (CallidusCloud)
 
Leadsius
 
Net-Results
 
MyGuestlist
0.3%  ProspectEye
 
StayWell
 
Selligent
  
LeadSquared
 
Greenrope
 
Reach Local
 
Antevenio
 
Optify
 
SalesFUSION
 
Jumplead
 
Right On Interactive
 
Invite Referrals
0.2%
Other
Adobe Marketing Cloud
Growth of APIs - 16
Growth of APIs 
FINANCE & 
ECOMMERCE
36.7% 
8.2% 
6.7% 
5.8% 
5.6% 
3.9% 
3% 
2.8% 
2.3% 1.4% 
1.4% 
1.3% 
1.2% 
1.1% 
2.5% 
1% Ecwid
1% WooCommerce 2.3
0.9% ZenCart
0.8% BigCartel
0.8% WP eCommerce
0.6% SquareSpace eCommerce
0.6% Xt-commerce
0.6% WooCommerce 2.2
0.6% WooCommerce 2.1
0.6% WooCommerce 2.0
0.5% Yahoo Store
0.4% Epages
0.3%  3D cart
 
NopCommerce
 
Gumroad
0.2%  Shopware
 
Gambio
 
Prom.ua
 
X-Cart
 
CS Cart
 
ScanNet
0.1%  
Magento 2
MyCommerce
Other
InSales
EKM Powershop
SEOShop
Magento Enterprise
Intershop
1shoppingcart
JTL-Shop 3
CATEGORY MARKET LEADERS
The percentage to the left represents the finance market 
share generated by Datanyze. It is calculated by the 
number of websites using given technology divided by the 
total number of websites using any of the technologies 
selected in the left column; websites limited to the Alexa 
top 1M.
Integration roadmaps are often prioritized based on 
customer demand for integrations to current software 
market leaders. A critical aspect of integration design is to 
consider who the current market leader is within the space 
and ensure your application is futureproof for any new 
entrants to the market that could soon takeover.
Growth of APIs - 17
API INTEGRATIONS 
COMPARE  
AND  
CONTRAST
API Integration | Compare and C ntrast 
chapter 3
Growth of APIs - 18
Kin Lane
API Evangelist
Cloud Elements has their finger on the pulse of the API sector in their report, highlighting the API growth in the areas that matter 
most to businesses today, but also by identifying the biggest challenges we face in ensuring APIs continue to drive the same growth 
we've enjoyed over the last decade. This is what I do as the API Evangelist, focus on what has been driving the growth, but highlight 
the deficiencies across the sector that might be holding things back, and in the way of seeing the scale we expect of the API economy. 
 
With the growth in the number of public APIs, and resulting amount of valuable digital resources being made available online, 
standardizing how we secure access to these resources is growing more important each day. Identity, authentication and access 
management will continue to be the biggest challenge we all face, and be the number one area that companies will need to be 
investing in they expect to achieve success in their API journey.  
 
Discovery is another area of the API lifecycle that will continue to plague API providers, consumers, and the businesses and people 
they are serving in coming years. With the growing number of both public and private APIs, we need to be investing in crafting, 
storing, and sharing of metadata describing our APIs, as well as the operations surrounding them--without discovery, we won't 
continue to see the growth we've enjoyed in the space over the last decade. 
 
As this State of API Integrations Report highlights, the strong areas of growth have been in the most critical areas of doing business 
online today. The deployment and availability and the management of these resources is just the beginning. We need to continue 
orchestrating, synchronizing, and ensuring these resources are where we need them, when we need, them, across the growing 
number of cloud platforms we are depending on to make our businesses continue to operate in today's fast-paced digital environment. 
 
Cloud Elements' State of API Integrations Report provides us with a good look at the growth in the API space, but I support it because 
it gives an honest look at the hard work we still have ahead of us. It can be easy to get excited about the growth we've made in the 
last decade with new areas like cloud computing, social, and critical business areas like storage, CRM, marketing, and finance, but the 
real opportunities lie ahead once we invest more in authentication, discovery, bulk operations, and making sure our resources are 
where they need to be, when it matters to our business. 
 
 
A Note from the Expert 
A NOTE FROM
the Expert
Growth of APIs - 19
THE BIGGEST 
CHALLENGES IN API 
TECHNOLOGY THAT 
NEED TO BE SOLVED...
API integration technology, best practices, and lessons learned 
have come a long way, but there are still many obstacles that 
stand in the way of developers and organizations getting the 
most out of the API Economy, or areas where API providers 
can improve the developer experience. 
API Integration | Compare and C ntrast 
From the research provided by SmartBear in their State of APIs Report 2016, 
thirty-nine percent of enterprises want easier integration between the tools they use,
and they wanted it yesterday. These companies have more than 1,031 internal cloud 
services, so getting every app to work together is a major need.
API Integrations  
compare and contrast
41%
39%
25%
22%
22%
17%
11%
9%
1%
Security
Easier Integration between tools
Standardization
Scalability
Composability/Muli-purpose re-use
Authentication
Discoverability
Versioning
Other
Growth of APIs - 20
API technologies also continue to evolve - 
both in terms of standards and best practice. For example, a move 
toward event-driven integration models has demonstrated a surge 
in the support for and use of Webhooks. Just publishing or writing 
to an API is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of integration.
Developers all too often are left to deal with various aspects of API 
complexity themselves, such as authentication and authorization, 
metadata discovery, bulk support, and event synchronization.
By addressing these four challenges that cause 
friction around API integration, enterprises, app 
providers and developers can take advantage of the 
efficiency and opportunity offered by a seamless, 
fully connected application ecosystem.
API Integrations  
compare and contrast
2012
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
API Integration | Compare and C ntrast 
Growth of APIs - 21
API Integrations  
compare and contrast
AUTHENTICATION IS THE KEY
Authentication and authorization are fundamental to exposing data and services via APIs, providing 
not only simple authentication, but also identity based access control. This lets the API provider 
know which client is connecting and what features or data they have access to.
41% 
33% 
17% 
8% 
OAUTH2
API KEY
CUSTOM
BASIC
OAUTH1
API Integration | Compare and C ntrast 
TYPES OF AUTH
With so much concern today around data security, many application providers are moving away 
from simple single-factor authentication methods and requiring an additional step to verify the 
identity of the client. This often means obtaining and submitting an additional code after the simple 
username and password have been accepted.
Currently the market is moving quickly to multi-factor and delegated auth mechanisms based on 
OAuth, but there are still many APIs out there today relying on Basic Auth (17 percent), API Keys (1 
percent) or some custom implementation of API Key & Secret (33 percent).
Looking more closely at OAuth usage, our statistics show that the unloved and 
complicated OAuth 1.0 (and 1.0a) 
is used by only 8 percent of providers today 
compared with the more ubiquitous OAuth 2.0 at over 41 percent.  
1% 
Growth of APIs - 22
API Integration | Compare and C ntrast 
SUPPORT FOR OAUTH
The preference for OAuth is well placed. This mechanism is token-based and far more secure than 
relying only on usernames and passwords which can be easily shared or spoofed. Access tokens can 
be time-bounded, or have other criteria (such as location) taken into account, meaning access can 
be easily revoked or challenged if such criteria are not met. 
In addition, OAuth 2.0 allows the provider to authorize access to specific API functionality or data 
through the use of a feature called "scope". Simply put, an access token is granted the scope to 
perform certain actions. For example, some clients may only be granted read-only access to data via 
the API, and this limitation of scope will be associated with their access token. Whereas a different 
client may be granted write access also, again configured via token they have been granted.
The level of flexibility offered by OAuth 2.0 makes it the ideal choice for authentication and 
authorization of clients.
API Integrations  
compare and contrast
CLOUD ELEMENTS SUPPORT  
FOR AUTHENTICATION
Cloud Elements has normalized authentication for each 
type of the authentication used by the endpoint (e.g., Basic, 
OAuth 1.0, OAuth 2.0, WS-Security, API Key, etc). There 
are inherent authentication workflow variations depending 
on the type of authentication (e.g., basic credentials vs. 
OAuth 2.0) but the authentication types are implemented 
consistently.  Cloud Elements uses a normalized API 
token based approach with a user and organization secret, 
combined with an Element token associated with the 
specific authenticated account of the Element (known as 
an "Element Instance" (see term definitions).  Switching 
endpoints within a Hub is as simple as swapping out a 
single element token.
Growth of APIs - 23
85%
15%
NO SUPPORT
SUPPORT
METADATA DISCOVERY
With such proliferation of applications and services used in enterprise or application 
development and the sheer number of APIs available today, developers must carry 
the burden of understanding the details of each integration. This is becoming 
exponentially more time consuming.
In addition, many of the applications in use offer the ability to customize or add 
to the data they store for a given entity. For example, in Salesforce it's possible to 
customize the fields associated with customer account, contact, or lead, etc.
To help relieve some of the pain, API providers are increasingly offering a capability 
known as metadata discovery, so that data models and resource structures can be 
accessed and understood programmatically. Taking the Salesforce example again, 
the metadata interface makes it possible to simply "ask" what the API can do and 
in what format a client should expect to receive responses and data objects. If a 
custom field is added in this case, the metadata can be used again to discover this 
addition.
In our research we have found that 58% of endpoints support metadata discovery. 
One caveat to this research is that it's heavily weighted by the custom data integrations 
provided by Cloud Elements. We are bound to support more endpoints that natively support 
custom data, therefore more endpoints that natively support metadata discovery. While we 
have found that 58% of APIs support discovery, our sense is that industry-wide, this number 
is far less.
Native Support of Metadata Discovery
Percentage of API Endpoints that Support Metadata Discovery  
Provided by Cloud Elements
API Integrations  
compare and contrast
API Integration | Compare and C ntrast 
58.9% 
32.7% 
8.4% 
Metadata 
Discovery
No Support
Unknown
We assume across the industry <15% of APIs support metadata discovery. 
Growth of APIs - 24
METADATA DISCOVERY
Even though the number of API metadata interfaces are increasing, unfortunately 
the amount is still relatively small. From our statistics, we see application providers 
offering this most commonly in the CRM and Marketing Automation domains - 
likely because these platforms often need to handle custom data.
The challenge of metadata discovery shouldn't be confused with some of great 
work being done around API documentation languages - such as the Open API 
Initiative (formerly known as Swagger). While these efforts have greatly improved 
the developer experience and usability for many APIs, and enabled automated 
documentation and code-gen, ultimately, developers are still challenged with the 
task of reading and learning virtual reams of documentation in order to integrate 
with the APIs they need to use.
API product managers should consider how to enable metadata discovery for 
their APIs - even where the data model is static. Discovery interfaces provide the 
foundation for easy data manipulation - if the structure of a data object can be 
made available programmatically, it then becomes possible to transform data from 
one source to another. This transformation capability is fundamental to enterprise 
integration where a single system is no longer the sole system of record for much 
of our data.
API Integrations  
compare and contrast
API Integration | Compare and C ntrast 
CLOUD ELEMENTS SUPPORT  
FOR METADATA DISCOVERY
Discovery Service - Cloud Elements includes a 
comprehensive data discovery service that provides 
normalized metadata, such as the list of field names and 
types. Additional information, if available from an endpoint, 
may also be obtained such as: display name, read-only, etc. 
If an endpoint doesn't provide discovery service APIs, Cloud 
Elements will still provide a minimum set of metadata about 
the given resource (e.g., name and type).  Cloud Elements 
also allows you to discover custom fields (as long as the 
values are not empty), by supplying an object ID when a 
native discovery service is not available.   The Discovery 
Service is used along with the Transformation Service to 
normalize the responses across endpoints.  
Growth of APIs - 25
BULK OPERATIONS
Bulk Upload and Download of data is useful for many applications, and 
where available we see users are keen to leverage this functionality. Yet only 
42 percent of APIs that Cloud Elements works with actually support bulk. This 
is a surprising figure, as almost all data sets in enterprise SaaS applications are 
substantial and require some form of bulk operations. Most enterprises struggle 
with the amount of data they have in the cloud. With 58 percent of APIs not 
offering Bulk support, SaaS applications make it hard to migrate data into and out 
of their systems when less than half offer programmatic methods. This situation 
acts as a barrier for migration, or synchronization between any new applications 
that want to seamlessly work with existing systems of record.
In cases where bulk operations are not available, another factor developers 
must deal with is around API rate limits. While necessary protections to maintain 
availability and performance for all users, rate limits can make it near impossible 
to deal with large volumes of data. For example, a popular e-commerce app limits 
applications to two calls per second, with a "leaky bucket" mechanism allowing up 
to 40 calls in backlog. This means your application must deal with bulk data at rate 
of 2TPS which might result in hours or even days of continuous API calls.
API Integrations  
compare and contrast
Ross Garrett
Enterprise users are often dealing with vast data lakes, 
that need to be synchronized, analyzed, migrated or even 
shared. Application providers must think carefully about the 
functionality they offer to handle this scale of data.
API Integration | Compare and C ntrast 
Growth of APIs - 26
BULK OPERATIONS
There is no doubt that bulk data operations represent a unique challenge, 
computing resources can be tied up for unpredictable amounts of time and data 
loading can require complex field mapping. These challenges are worth the effort 
however, as many users today will be looking for easy ways to migrate between 
products - it may seem counter-intuitive to offer your customers an easy way 
to move off your product, but not offering migration capabilities may prevent a 
customer from choosing your platform in the first place.
API Integrations  
compare and contrast
API Integration | Compare and C ntrast 
CLOUD ELEMENTS  
SUPPORT FOR BULK
Bulk  - Cloud Elements provides the ability to upload and 
download data in bulk from an endpoint in a normalized 
way.  Cloud Elements will leverage the provider bulk 
endpoints whenever that is available. When there is no bulk 
available from the provider, Cloud Elements will provide a 
pseudo bulk service for uploading and downloading data 
from the endpoint. For uploads, we will accept a file and 
then create objects at the endpoint on a record by record 
basis. For downloads, we will execute a search API against 
the endpoint, and loop through all results until we have 
retrieved all the data. Cloud Elements will store these files 
(encrypted) in our platform for a maximum of three days. 
We're currently rolling out a Bulk service on an Element by 
Element basis.
Let us know if you need Bulk APIs for a given Element by 
contacting us at support@cloud-elements.com. 
Growth of APIs - 27
EVENTS AND 
SYNCHRONIZATION
 
Business events are really the key piece of data that enterprises, 
applications and developers care about. In software terms, there 
are many ways of handling events - but webhooks is becoming the 
technology of choice amongst API providers and developers. 
Eighty percent of developers prefer to use 
webhooks over other methods.  
Unfortunately, only 29 percent of APIs offer webhooks.  
Out of these APIs, 92 percent return JSON data, and 8 percent return SOAP or 
XML. Across the categories we profiled, Marketing Automation Software, Cloud 
Storage and e-Commerce offered the widest support for webhooks with 44 
percent, 43 percent and 36 percent respectively. 
API Integrations  
compare and contrast
API Integration | Compare and C ntrast 
DEVELOPER PREFERENCE
Growth of APIs - 28
THE BENEFITS OF 
WEBHOOKS
Webhooks automatically post new event data to a user-defined URL 
monitored by the user's integrated applications. When a new event posts 
to the URL, the linked app updates to include this new data. The primary 
difference between webhooks and polling is that the hooks only update 
when there is new information available.
Webhooks work by automatically posting new event data to a user-defined 
URL which is monitored by the user's linked applications. Each time a new 
event is posted to the URL, the linked applications update to include the new 
data. Unlike polling which is successful on less than two percent of requests 
(according to research provided by Zapier), webhooks only update when new 
information is available. Because of the increased efficiency, over 82 percent 
of developers surveyed by Wufoo indicated that they would rather receive 
new data via webhooks instead of with polling. Despite this preference, only 
29 percent of APIs currently support webhooks.
API Integrations  
compare and contrast
API Integration | Compare and C ntrast 
71% 
29% 
Without
Webhooks
Offer
Webhooks
Growth of APIs - 29
EVENT AND SYNCRONIZATION
API Integrations  
compare and contrast
API Integration | Compare and C ntrast 
CLOUD ELEMENTS  
SUPPORT FOR EVENTS
Event  - Cloud Elements can be configured to 
listen for and notify users of actions/changes 
(i.e., Creates, Updates) to endpoint resources in 
a normalized way. We leverage webhook events 
when available from an endpoint. If webhooks are 
not supported, we provide a polling service that 
polls for new or modified data at the endpoint. 
Whether we use webhooks or polling, we provide 
a consistent JSON payload of the action that 
occurred to a resource along with the object 
name and the object ID. For completeness we 
also include the vendor's raw payload of the data 
associated with that event. Note that in order to 
provide a polling event capability, an endpoint 
must provide the ability to search for resource 
updates. Polling also has an inherent limitation that 
cannot support deleted events.
In most products without webhooks support, API integrations fall back to polling the application 
repeatedly, which is extremely wasteful. Approximately 98.5 percent of these polls return no useable 
data. Another way to think about that: every 2 out of 100 times, you app's integration will receive no 
updated or changed data, when using a polling framework to manage synchronization.
Event-Driven Architecture is certainly not a new methodology, but it's enjoying renewed support in the 
world of integration because it reduces coupling between services and provides a far more efficient way 
of synchronizing and updating data. 
If you have 3,000 applications interested in knowing when a new customer is created in your CRM, and 
if you are using traditional REST APIs, you will have 3,000 clients repeatedly asking the CRM platform 
"is there a new customer?", and most often getting the answer "no". An event-driven implementation 
reverses this integration model, where instead of clients asking if there is new data, the CRM platform 
tells each of the 3,000 applications when new data is available.
POLLING RESULTS
98.5% = FAIL
(No Usable Data)
Growth of APIs - 30
API  
CALCULATOR
chapter 4
API Calculator 
Growth of APIs - 31
INTERACTIVE 
CALCULATOR TO 
SCORE YOUR API 
To wrap things up, we wanted to give our readers a tool, mechanism, 
and calculator to gauge how your API currently stacks up against other 
APIs - focused on how easy it is for API consumers can integrate with 
your service. Here are two APIs we have scored based on the research 
and findings from this report. One good and one not so good -- we're 
not calling out products or vendors in particular, so we haven't listed the 
actual endpoints, but rather offer these examples to further quantify the 
current State of API Integration. 
API CALCULATOR
API Calculator 
YOU CAN USE THE SCORECARD 
FOR YOURSELF TO DETERMINE 
YOUR SCORE OUT OF A 
POSSIBLE TOTAL OF 100. 
CLICK HERE TO FIND YOUR SCORE!
http://bit.ly/2od6cVJ
Growth of APIs - 32
CRM ENDPOINT SCORECARD (BEST-IN-CLASS API)  
TOTAL SCORE:      91/100
CRITERIA
NOT APPLICABLE
POOR  
(1 POINT)
OK  
(4 POINTS)
GOOD  
(7 POINTS)
EXCELLENT  
(10 POINTS)
TOTAL 
(POINTS)
STYLE
We have ranked API style from Hypermedia (Excellent), REST (Good), SOAP 
(OK) & Other (Poor) 

10
AUTH
API Authentication models ranked OAuth 2.0 (Excellent), OAuth 1.0 (Good), 
API Key/Secret (OK), HTTP Basic Auth (Poor)

10
API DOCUMENTATION &  
DATA TYPES
API Documentation options ranked from 
OAI/Swagger (Excellent), OData (Good), XML or Other (OK), None (Poor) 

10
API METADATA
DISCOVERY
API Metadata Discovery capabilities ranked from
Full Object & Type Discovery (Excellent), Objects only (Good), Type only (OK), 
None (Poor) 

10
EVENTS
API eventing support ranked from Pub/Sub (Excellent), Webhooks (Good), 
Comet (OK), None (Poor)

7
BULK SUPPORT
Bulk upload & download support where applicable, is ranked Supported 
(Excellent) or Unsupported (Poor)

10
PAGINATION
API Pagination support is ranked from Full Link Headers (Excellent) Paging 
with total count (Good), Paging without count (OK), Paging without page size 
config (Poor). Or not applicable where necessary.

7
HTTP VERBS
Good RESTful design dictates that the appropriate HTTP Verb be used for 
each API action, and implementation is ranked from Complete (Excellent), 
Partial (Good), Inconsistent (OK), Everything is POST or GET (Poor)

10
VERSION CONTROL
API Version control has been ranked according to developer experience from 
Default version (Excellent), URI version (Good), Content Negotiation or HTTP 
Header (OK), Inconsistent (Poor). Or if you haven't got to v2 yet then Not 
Applicable. 

7
ERROR HANDLING
Consistency and information provided across API error handling is ranked from 
Complete (Excellent), Correct categories with limited info (Good), Some Error 
Codes (OK), Inconsistent or Embedded (Poor)

10
API Calculator 
Growth of APIs - 33
CRM ENDPOINT SCORECARD (WORST-IN-CLASS API)  
TOTAL SCORE:      34/100
CRITERIA
NOT APPLICABLE
POOR  
(1 POINT)
OK  
(4 POINTS)
GOOD  
(7 POINTS)
EXCELLENT  
(10 POINTS)
TOTAL 
POINTS
STYLE
We have ranked API style from Hypermedia (Excellent), REST (Good), SOAP 
(OK) & Other (Poor) 

4
AUTH
API Authentication models ranked OAuth 2.0 (Excellent), OAuth 1.0 (Good), 
API Key/Secret (OK), HTTP Basic Auth (Poor)

1
API DOCUMENTATION &  
DATA TYPES
API Documentation options ranked from 
OAI/Swagger (Excellent), OData (Good), XML or Other (OK), None (Poor) 

7
API METADATA
DISCOVERY
API Metadata Discovery capabilities ranked from
Full Object & Type Discovery (Excellent), Objects only (Good), Type only (OK), 
None (Poor) 

7
EVENTS
API eventing support ranked from Pub/Sub (Excellent), Webhooks (Good), 
Comet (OK), None (Poor)

1
BULK SUPPORT
Bulk upload & download support where applicable, is ranked Supported 
(Excellent) or Unsupported (Poor)

10
PAGINATION
API Pagination support is ranked from Full Link Headers (Excellent) Paging 
with total count (Good), Paging without count (OK), Paging without page size 
config (Poor). Or not applicable where necessary.

1
HTTP VERBS
Good RESTful design dictates that the appropriate HTTP Verb be used for 
each API action, and implementation is ranked from Complete (Excellent), 
Partial (Good), Inconsistent (OK), Everything is POST or GET (Poor)

1
VERSION CONTROL
API Version control has been ranked according to developer experience from 
Default version (Excellent), URI version (Good), Content Negotiation or HTTP 
Header (OK), Inconsistent (Poor). Or if you haven't got to v2 yet then Not 
Applicable. 

1
ERROR HANDLING
Consistency and information provided across API error handling is ranked from 
Complete (Excellent), Correct categories with limited info (Good), Some Error 
Codes (OK), Inconsistent or Embedded (Poor)

1
API Calculator 
Growth of APIs - 34
YOUR API SCORECARD
Here's a blank canvas, download it, fill it out, get your score and share it! We'd love to hear how your API measures up against the rest of the industry.  
Use the hashtag #APIScorecard and #StateOfAPIIntegration to help us track your data. 
CRITERIA
NOT APPLICABLE
POOR  
(1 POINT)
OK  
(4 POINTS)
GOOD  
(7 POINTS)
EXCELLENT  
(10 POINTS)
TOTAL 
4 POINTS
STYLE
We have ranked API style from Hypermedia (Excellent), REST (Good), SOAP 
(OK) & Other (Poor) 

AUTH
API Authentication models ranked OAuth 2.0 (Excellent), OAuth 1.0 (Good), 
API Key/Secret (OK), HTTP Basic Auth (Poor)

API DOCUMENTATION &  
DATA TYPES
API Documentation options ranked from 
OAI/Swagger (Excellent), OData (Good), XML or Other (OK), None (Poor) 

API METADATA
DISCOVERY
API Metadata Discovery capabilities ranked from
Full Object & Type Discovery (Excellent), Objects only (Good), Type only (OK), 
None (Poor) 

EVENTS
API eventing support ranked from Pub/Sub (Excellent), Webhooks (Good), 
Comet (OK), None (Poor)

BULK SUPPORT
Bulk upload & download support where applicable, is ranked Supported 
(Excellent) or Unsupported (Poor)

PAGINATION
API Pagination support is ranked from Full Link Headers (Excellent) Paging 
with total count (Good), Paging without count (OK), Paging without page size 
config (Poor). Or not applicable where necessary.

HTTP VERBS
Good RESTful design dictates that the appropriate HTTP Verb be used for 
each API action, and implementation is ranked from Complete (Excellent), 
Partial (Good), Inconsistent (OK), Everything is POST or GET (Poor)

VERSION CONTROL
API Version control has been ranked according to developer experience from 
Default version (Excellent), URI version (Good), Content Negotiation or HTTP 
Header (OK), Inconsistent (Poor). Or if you haven't got to v2 yet then Not 
Applicable. 

ERROR HANDLING
Consistency and information provided across API error handling is ranked from 
Complete (Excellent), Correct categories with limited info (Good), Some Error 
Codes (OK), Inconsistent or Embedded (Poor)

YOUR SCORE:      _____/100
Growth of APIs - 35
API Calculator 
CLICK HERE TO FIND YOUR SCORE!
http://bit.ly/2od6cVJ
API CALCULATOR
INTERACTIVE CALCULATOR 
TO SCORE YOUR API
You can use the scorecard for yourself to determine your  
score out of a possible total of 100.
Growth of APIs - 36
CLOSING
And there you have it. We hope you enjoyed seeing the data and 
hearing from our contributors about the trends that are set to affect 
APIs and application integration. Don't forget to see how your API 
measures up against the rest of the industry - score your API and share 
it! Follow the conversation by using the hashtag #APIScorecard and 
#StateOfAPIIntegration.
Check out our resource center for other easy to follow information. If 
you have questions, or would like to learn more about Cloud Elements, 
contact us today!
TRY CLOUD ELEMENTS FOR FREE
Closing 
Growth of APIs - 37
ABOUT CLOUD ELEMENTS
It's bigger than just a connection, integrating APIs is about moving data, powering 
transactions, connecting mobile apps and thousands of other functions.
Cloud Elements is a cloud API integration platform that enables developers to 
publish, integrate, aggregate and manage all of their APIs through a unified platform. 
Using Cloud Elements, developers can quickly connect entire categories of cloud 
services (e.g. CRM, Documents, Finance) using uniform APIs or simply synchronize 
data between multiple cloud services (e.g. Salesforce, Zendesk, Quickbooks) using its 
innovative integration toolkit.
Founded in October 2012, Cloud Elements is purpose built for developers to help 
organize their world of APIs through a one-to-many approach. A 'Visionary' in API 
Management, according to Gartner Inc., Cloud Elements is headquartered in Denver, 
CO, but serves customers worldwide.
Learn more about us at:
WWW.CLOUD-ELEMENTS.COM
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