The API is more than the new CLI »

This article by Lori MacVittie of F5 makes some good points that whoever becomes the de facto API in cloud infrastructure might win - and goes as far to say that the API replaces the CLI.

Generally agree but might take it a step further.  

Just as we drove a 'de facto' standard CLI at Cisco, de facto standard "infrastructure APIs" likely will emerge.   (Already seeing this happening with the AWS API)

But APIs represent a significant evolution.  Why?  CLI commands and output are unstructured.  API commands and output are structured. 

I can point to an experience I had at Cisco. There is a Cisco CLI command called ‘show BGP summary' that gives the status of BGP peer – a good window into the status of the complete routing infrastructure.  In one of the releases, we changed the display a little bit and all hell broke loose - a ton of P1s to fix.

Turns out nearly all the operators ran the command output thru scripts, parsed them and used output in ops. The small formatting change we introduced broke their operations. We were forced to roll back the change.

With APIs, the output is structured and it would have been possible to introduce additional information without breaking integrations.  

Even though Infrastructure APIs will take over some of what was integration with the CLI, a properly managed API allows evolution, migration and co-existence of multiple versions easily.

Deja vu:  As went networking, now goes cloud.. »

Some people thought it was unusual for a bunch of networking guys to start a company that wants to simplify the cloud services governance world.    But we see parallels all the time between the evolution of networking technologies and web services (SOA, APIs, Cloud services, or whatever you want to call them).

One parallel -  constantly shrinking 'islands of complexity' .    When IP started happening in the network world, there were many complex technologies like SNA, IPX, CLNS, etc.   First IP was used as a much simpler way to connect these 'islands of complexity' because there were such high barriers to making the complex technologies work together.   Over time, the islands got smaller and smaller until it was just IP.

And now here we are in the services world -  SOA, WS-*, ESB/middleware - all this enterprise complexity being connected together aross domains -  by simpler and simpler standards such as REST and technologies from the consumer world.   LIght weight service infrastructure (or call it Cloud or API infrastructure) will be used to connect these islands of complexity until the islands shrink away - and simpler APIs for app2app communication become the de facto standard.

-Ravi is a co-founder and VP Engineering of Sonoa.  Ravi developed the BGP protocol and Cisco Express Forwarding in Cisco and while in Redback architected and led the development of the SmartEdge Service Gateway, a Subscriber Management and Edge Routing platform.