I worked at a company that read the Amazon memo virtually straight after it was published and decided to copy it. The CIO at the time predicated every system's teams' bonus on it.
No API, no bonus.
What followed was 18mths of people building enterprise messaging systems and "buses" of various types. Hundreds of pages of documentation on APIs was prepared and released.
I think 2 API's with maybe 40 methods actually went live.
There were no bonuses
Many people left
The people who stayed were unhappy
It never happened, everyone quietly forgot about it after 18 mnths.
The CIO stayed for another 3 or 4 years - he only left when a new CEO came in due to internal promotion. The new CEO used to run one of the P&L's/business units and hated the CIO with a passion.
So... it's not the API mandate that made the difference at Amazon.
You can't just have a free for all mentality when building APIs. The platform has to be there first.
Everyone's API should just need simple descriptive json files and then a client can be generated to consume that API easily. Everyone can declare those json files and it would work everywhere across the business.
This free for all with no standardization is bound to be a disaster.
But I would claim that this is an existence proof - if the management will and focus is there for an API enabled business (it was) this case study proves that is not sufficient to create the kind of company that Amazon became. An API program isn't a magic bullet (as everyone knows by now I guess!)
- An API program is a necessary, but not sufficient condition to replicate Amazon’s success
You’re right that this case study proves that it alone is insufficient to create the kind of company that Amazon became, but does it also prove that it’s unnecessary to create the kind of company that Amazon became?
I think that the testamentary on this thread from current Amazon employees that they have ditched API requirements is evidence that it is also unneeded to sustain the kind of company that Amazon is.
No API, no bonus.
What followed was 18mths of people building enterprise messaging systems and "buses" of various types. Hundreds of pages of documentation on APIs was prepared and released.
I think 2 API's with maybe 40 methods actually went live.
There were no bonuses
Many people left
The people who stayed were unhappy
It never happened, everyone quietly forgot about it after 18 mnths.
The CIO stayed for another 3 or 4 years - he only left when a new CEO came in due to internal promotion. The new CEO used to run one of the P&L's/business units and hated the CIO with a passion.
So... it's not the API mandate that made the difference at Amazon.