Will Australia take up the API advantage or whither on the vine?

I’ve always been confused as to why my homeland isn’t actually more of an API world leader. After all, Australia has an ideal environment to see the growth of API-led business and government initiatives:

• The distance and the off-kilter time zone mean APIs could help Australian businesses appeal to international audiences at all times of the day and night without having to have an around-the-clock staff employed.
• Australian businesses could integrate their services better into a global marketplace by leveraging APIs. There has been a long history of Australia’s skills at assessing international world practice and then implementing the best locally.
• Australia’s small population spread across a large land mass means delivering digital government services using APIs could support much more of the population at a lower cost. 

On the negative side, Australia has squandered much of its mining economy boom without advancing a digital economy; dragged its heals on implementing a national broadband network, which is now noticeably slower than in my adopted homeland of Spain; and has regularly slipped in annual rankings for innovation and capacity to support tech startup ecosystems.

Australian tech leadership

APIs have certainly helped industry leaders like Atlassian compete globally. Atlassian is a DevOps tools company most recently in the headlines for buying project management tool Trello, but it’s probably best known in developer circles for creating and managing Jira, the software issue tracking tool. APIs have been essential to Atlassian’s success, enabling the Sydney-based global company to integrate its DevOps and software products with international services also used in a developer’s toolchain. It’s able to create a clear business case in a complex Internet of Things (IoT) environment by leveraging APIs.

Then we have Switch Automation, which has worked with Forest City, a U.S.-based real estate company, to reduce energy costs by 20 percent across just 10 buildings in their 150-plus strong stock by using an API-driven approach. While implementing phase one of their rollout, they were able to identify a controls vendor that had allowed the inefficiencies to amass. That contractor will now cover half the costs of retro-fitting sensors into Forest City’s existing building network.

The story is a familiar one to many who are commencing industrial IoT API projects. Often, these initial projects identify cost savings that make for a compelling business case to proceed with further implementation activities.

Switch Automation CEO Deb Noller will speak at the upcoming APIdays conference about how her company supports smart building initiatives. She argues that enterprises are confused by the complexity and lack of interoperability and believes open APIs are the answer.

I’m also intrigued to hear how national airline Qantas uses APIs and to hear how artists marketplace and startup success story Redbubble uses new API technologies such as GraphQL to better deploy their mobile app at scale.

An API knowledge sector

Past years of APIdays were co-managed by Sixtree, a digital consultancy that, in part, helps enterprises manage API projects. This will be the first year APIdays is co-managed by Deloitte, which bought Sixtree last year. Deloitte’s Australian consultancy offices were clearly seeing a greater need to offer their enterprise customers integration and platform management support services, so rather than the slow process of skilling up internally on APIs, they folded that expertise into their consultancy group by acquiring the Sixtree team. Again, that demonstrates the rapid uptake of APIs in Australia, or at least the market lead.

And I will be hosting a panel on open banking APIs at the event. Fintech and banking are also Australian industries seeing rapid uptake of APIs to drive innovation and new customer-centric business approaches. Perhaps not as fast as in the U.S (thanks to leaders like Capital One) or in the EU and U.K. (where regulations are forcing banks to adopt APIs), but the Australian banking industry has again picked up a little steam.

API and knowledge economy stagnation

But for every step forward, there are several backward moves. I’m still surprised there is not more innovation in Australia around APIs. One of the most disappointing sectors is government.

Australia hired one of the world’s leading public services API experts, Paul Shetler, to run Australia’s Digital Transformation Office. Shetler had big goals of bringing the U.K.’s digital services culture to the Australian government. But Shetler was so disenfranchised by the lack of progress and government agency bureaucracy that he left after only 18 months in the role. The Australian government’s API agenda has seemingly evaporated, although Peter Sculley from the Victorian government will be sharing details at APIdays of his work leading a state-based API strategy.

Meanwhile, in December last year, the tech advocacy organization StartupAUS published the CrossRoads Report (sponsored by Google), which found that while there are optimistic signs of progress in adopting new technological approaches such as APIs, Australia’s years-long underinvestment in a knowledge economy is affecting all parts of the Australian innovation system, with serious catching up to do. Deloitte says 65 percent of the Australian economy is based on industries facing significant disruption. 

The way forward?

APIs can be a solution to help rebuild Australia’s future economic opportunities, and events like APIdays will be crucial in helping leaders share their strategies and best practices. But there is little time left to lag much longer.