According to Postman’s 2024 State of the API report, 74% of respondents followed the API-first approach in 2024, compared to 66% last year. “APIs are no longer an afterthought but the foundation of development, with between 26 and 50 APIs powering the average application,” Postman wrote in the report. 

The benefits of this strategy include faster API production and faster recovery from failures. This year, 63% of respondents were able to produce an API within one week (up from 47% last year). Additionally, organizations following this approach can typically recover from API failures in under an hour. 

“By prioritizing API design, governance, and security, teams can unlock new opportunities, deliver APIs faster, and ensure their APIs are protected and optimized for the future,” Postman said.

While there are many benefits to API-first, it doesn’t entirely eliminate the challenges API developers face, such as poor documentation and lack of proper collaboration. 

Thirty-nine percent of respondents claim inconsistent documentation is the biggest roadblock to API development. Forty-four percent read through source code to understand their APIs, but over half collaborate with people who don’t understand the code, like product managers, quality assurance, and designers. Forty-three percent also struggle with getting information from other developers who may be working asynchronously in different time zones. 

The report also found that one third of respondents are using multiple gateways for their APIs, signaling that “the traditional single-gateway model is becoming obsolete.”

Another positive finding is that 62% of respondents are generating income from their APIs, and 33% report that APIs make up over 50% of their total revenue. 

“APIs are no longer just technical enablers—they are revenue-generating products … This signals the rise of the API-as-a-product model, where APIs are designed, developed, and marketed as strategic assets,” the report stated. 

And finally AI is resulting in increased API usage as well, with AI-related traffic on Postman’s platform increasing by 73% in the last year. Companies are now having to create APIs not just for humans, but for interfacing with AI systems as well. 

“The age of AI is powered by APIs. The rapid adoption of chatbots like ChatGPT has proven that AI bots are going to advance the state of human-computer interaction. Until now, we have primarily been designing APIs for humans, but designing APIs for machines will become an increasingly important area… and AI alone won’t boost productivity—you need quality APIs to stay ahead in modern software,” the report concluded. 

For its survey, Postman surveyed more than 5,600 developers and API professionals, and made observations based on the activity of the 35 million+ users on its platform. 

The post Report: Developers are increasingly adopting an API-first approach appeared first on SD Times.

“An API should be built with its user in mind. Users need to know what an API is and how it works. If they can’t do that, they waste a lot of time looking for the information, struggling to make APIs work. And developers aren’t the only ones who need to understand them; they need to be product- and QA-friendly as well. LEGO wouldn’t sell a LEGO castle set without instructions on how to put it all together. The same goes for APIs. Dev teams need to collaborate on APIs, just as much as they need to collaborate on code,” Abhinav Asthana, co-founder and CEO of Postman, wrote in a blog post. 

With the release of Postman v11, API changes are now shown in the workspace updates feed, rather than being dispersed across various communication channels. API consumers that “watch” that workspace will be notified about the update, with an alert that includes a summary of the changes and a way to navigate to the change. Users will also be able to comment or react to the update. 

A comment mode has also been added to Postman Collections, which is a self-service interface for finding information about APIs. Developers can now highlight text and add a comment to it and can mention specific people in the comment. Others can also respond to these comments and create conversation threads to organize thoughts. 

Partner Workspaces, now generally available for Professional and Enterprise plans, are access-controlled workspaces where API developers can collaborate on APIs with external partners. Postman also introduced the ability to publish content to multiple partners at once as well. 

“When companies work with lots of partners, they maintain multiple workspaces with nearly the same content in each one to ensure isolation between partners. This can become a lot of juggling. To resolve this burden, we’re introducing multi-partner mode so that you can publish Postman Collections to multiple external partners. The partner cannot see other partners’ activity in their workspace; they will see only your team members. This provides a sandbox where customers and partners can evaluate and consume your APIs by sending successful requests quickly,” Asthana wrote. 

Postman v11 introduces the Package Library, which allows code to be reused multiple times across API requests. Packages contain blocks of business logic or code, and to reuse them, developers just reference that package in the places that need to reuse that code. 

Other collaboration updates include the general availability of the VS Code extension, workspace themes, a verification option in the Postman Public API Network, and more.

Additionally, the company’s AI assistant Postbot is now generally available. First introduced last May, Postbot can help write better tests for APIs, generate API documentation, accelerate debugging, visualize API responses, and more.   

“Whether organizations realize it or not, APIs are the hands and legs that power AI’s ‘thinking.’ Those that don’t prioritize their API design strategy now to prepare for an AI-driven future will be left behind,” said Asthana. “The AI battle will be won by improving APIs. Postman’s latest features will empower even the largest organizations to capitalize on the productivity benefits of AI by easing collaboration and communication around APIs, both internally and with external partners. We look forward to seeing the innovation that results.”

A full list of updates can be found in Postman’s release blog post. 

The post Postman v11 enables better collaboration on APIs with an improved update feed, comment mode, and more appeared first on SD Times.

Respondents judged the success of APIs by how much revenue they bring in, which is the second measure of success behind usage. 

API users also view price as a top consideration for 47% of respondents when deciding whether or not to integrate with an API. For the past two years it had been at 41% of respondents, and Postman believes this increase is a result of the current economic situation. 

Investment in APIs is also going strong, with 92% of respondents believing investment will rise or stay the same over the next two years, possibly indicating that some believe that the worst of the economic downturn in tech is over. 

There was also an increase in the number of companies who self-identify as “API-first leaders,” which are those who excel in metrics, such as how fast they can produce APIs and how quickly they can recover when APIs go down. In the previous two years only 8% identified this way, compared to 11% this year. 

“The State of the API Report sheds light on the realities of API usage and how APIs are delivering value to modern organizations,” said Abhinav Asthana, co-founder and CEO of Postman. “More companies are adopting an API-first approach to software development, and for the second year in a row, outperforming organizations that haven’t. Beyond the technical advantages, organizations are also seeing a direct impact on their bottom line, reporting their APIs as revenue generators. This outlook, combined with the rising use of AI tools, is fundamentally changing our relationship to software and the way we build it — and APIs are at the center of this shift.”

This year the company added a new category to the survey: generative AI. They found that 60% of respondents are using generative AI. Over half are using it for debugging and over a third use it to write code. 

They also found that API security improved this year for most respondents and the number of security incidents also decreased. However, in certain sectors — automotive, education, and retail — incidents occured at higher than average rates. 

Postman’s State of the API report surveyed over 40,000 tech professionals from companies of varying sizes across different ndustries, including financial, technology, and healthcare.

The post Report: APIs responsible for over a quarter of revenue for nearly half of all companies appeared first on SD Times.

“APIs are the building blocks of modern software. However, those blocks have not always been accessible to everyone,” said Abhinav Asthana, co-founder and CEO of Postman. “We are on a mission to change this. With more than 25 million users across every continent, we believe Postman can accomplish this at a massive scale so that any user, anywhere, can build and participate in today’s API-first world.”

According to the company, Postman Flows is a response to the increasing demand for low-code tools that allow users to build software without a large amount of programming experience. 

With this release, users can manipulate data with API calls as well as create workflows utilizing a high volume of readily available APIs. The company stated that this makes it so that everyone can come up with solutions to common problems. 

Postman Flows was inspired by the idea of “blocks” to form and visualize an application, allowing users to drag the blogs, build the application, and deploy the workflow. Additionally, with the use of AI, users can manipulate data returned by APIs by typing out what they want to do in natural language.

“Postman Flows is the sweet spot for us, as it gives our non-technical team members a low-code tool to build, document, test, and implement an API workflow,” said Thomas Schlegel, engineer at Built Technologies. “We can accomplish tasks faster with fewer errors, and we look forward to maximizing these benefits across the organization.”

The post Postman Flows makes building software more accessible appeared first on SD Times.

The Postman API Platform works to simplify each step of the API-first lifecycle as well as promotes collaboration so that company’s can create better APIs with increased speed.

Microsoft Azure API Management is a hybrid, multi-cloud management platform that helps to abstract back-end services and create modern API gateways available in over 50 regions around the world. 

“This announcement is great news for organizations that recognize APIs as fundamental business assets critical to digital transformation,” said Abhijit Kane, co-founder of Postman. “By uniting the world’s top API platform and a leading cloud provider, our two companies have taken a significant step in giving customers the comprehensive set of tools they need for accelerating the API lifecycle.”

With this partnership, users can create and test their APIs in Postman, deploy them to Azure, and simplify customers’ API onboarding experience.

Additionally, customers gain Postman-initiated imports from Azure API Management, the ability to export OpenAPI definitions to Azure API Management, and Azure API Management-initiated export of APIs into Postman. 

“Our goal is to enable developers with the most efficient way to build, manage, consume and collaborate with APIs, so a partnership with Postman was a natural decision for us,” said Balan Subramanian at Microsoft. “Our integrations will enable customers to realize productivity benefits at each phase of the API lifecycle. Together, we look forward to seeing how developers and customers everywhere will continue to drive innovation across their organizations by embracing an API-first culture.”

To learn more, read the blog. 

The post Postman and Microsoft announce partnership appeared first on SD Times.

The new and improved features include deeper integration with version control systems, all-new private API networks which provides a central directory of all internal APIs in an organization, and simplified API documentation and onboarding. 

The new version of the platform also includes a new enterprise governance feature in which team members with the Community Manager role can now view all public collection links created by all team members in one place, with the ability to see who created which link and remove any links to collections that are not for public viewing.

Developers can now bring together key components with the definition of APIs including source code management, CI/CD, API gateways, and APM to help you govern the entire API landscape.

“Over the last few years we’ve seen the API-first mindset become embraced by a wide range of customers, from individual developers and early-stage teams to Fortune 500 companies,” said Abhinav Asthana, co-founder and CEO of Postman. “Meanwhile, the entire API Management category has been stuck in a code-first world—focusing only on gateways and lacking the tooling necessary to harness the true power of APIs. We believe that the transition from code-first to API-first is a significant technology shift, and that to succeed in the API-first world, engineering organizations need a set of API tools integrated into a new category of solutions: API Platforms.”

The post Postman updates its API platform appeared first on SD Times.

Nim 1.4 was the latest release of the language in October, which brought a new major version of the beta-grade package manager Nimble, v0.12.0. It also featured ORC management, Nim’s all-new cycle collector based on ARC, which has all of the advantages or ARC except for determinism, according to the Nim developers in a blog post.

Nim also hit a major milestone by crossing 1500 available Nim packages, and the number of submitted packages this year saw a 35% growth over previous years. 

Postman API Hack announced
Postman’s new hackathon is beginning on Monday, Jan. 25th and offering $100,000 in cash prizes. The winner will be announced at Postman Galaxy which takes places between February 2nd to 4th. 

“Our goal with the Postman API Hack is to highlight the amazing things that become possible by harnessing the power of APIs, and to showcase developers’ work to our community of more than 13 million users and 500,000 organizations. We’re excited to see what participants will come up with, and how they will have an impact on the world,” said Abhinav Asthana, the co-founder and CEO of Postman.

Additional details on the hackathon are available here.

TIBCO acquires Information Builders (ibi) 
The acquisition will add ibi’s data management and analytics capabilities to the advanced TIBCO Connected Intelligence platform.

Ibi has data quality, preparation, and integration products that are now being added to the TIBCO Any Data Hub and TIBCO Responsive Application Mesh. 

“This represents a significant opportunity for TIBCO and ibi as customers strive to become data-first enterprises. There is tremendous potential for any platform that can integrate and manage data to create intelligent workflows for employees, partners, and customers,” said Howard Dresner, the chief research officer at Dresner Advisory Services.

The post SD Times news digest: A recap of Nim in 2020, Postman API Hack announced, and TIBCO acquires Information Builders appeared first on SD Times.

“While there have been many reports of security breaches over the past year, not just with APIs, but technology as a whole, what doesn’t make the news is that there are millions of APIs that operate as expected, with no security breaches, day after day, month after month, year after year,” Rebecca Johnston-Gilbert, a Postman spokesperson stated in an email to SD Times. “Our survey reflects the confidence in the security of their APIs, of both developers and the industry as a whole. The reality is that jobs are on the line, and reducing vulnerabilities and keeping APIs secure are important goals they work toward every day.”

RELATED CONTENT: The next wave of API management

The annual Postman State of the API report is designed to provide insights into the most significant issues and opportunities for APIs to address in 2020. Postman surveyed over 10,000 API developers, users, testers, and executives for the report. The survey revealed that more developers work with APIs than other users in an organization, but that the reach of APIs is expanding to more than just developers. About 46% of respondents identified as being a front-end or back-end developer. Some of the other roles represented in the survey include QA engineers, technical team leads, API architects, and DevOps specialists. 

“This year’s survey data reveals that the API ecosystem is expanding beyond developers,” said Abhinav Asthana, Postman’s co-founder and CEO. “Working directly with APIs has become part of a surprising number of positions, including non-developers such as executives and technical writers, which we think is an intriguing trend.”

The report also found that almost half of the respondents do not feel their APIs break, stop working, or change specification often enough to matter. About 28% said that breakages and changes occurred monthly, 15.7% said weekly, and 3.2% said daily. 

Another key finding is that 63.5% of respondents feel that providing examples in documentation is the most helpful enhancement that API providers can make. This was followed by standardization (59.4%) and sample code (57.8%). Other helpful enhancements included real-world use case, better workflows, additional tools, and SDKs. 

Postman also found that a majority of developers working with APIs haven’t been working with them for long. Around 78% of developers have less than five years of developing APIs, and only 12.2% have 10 or more years of experience working with APIs. API work also seems to be handled by small teams, with 72.6% of developers working with APIs being on teams with 10 members or less. In addition, 25.7% were on teams with 22 to 50 members and 1.7% were on teams with over 50 members. 

The company also discovered the breakdown of time spent working with APIs. According to the 2019 Postman State of the API report:

• 26.1% of time is spent on development, 
• 22.2% of time is spent on debugging and manual testing, 
• 11.4% of time is spent on automated testing, 
• 11.2% of time is spent on designing and mocking, 
• 9.1% is spent on managing others, 
• 7.3% is spent on documentation, 
• 5.7% is spent on monitoring, 
• 3.6 is spent on publishing, 
• and 3.3% of time is spent on writing about APIs. 

The post Report: A majority of companies feel confident about API security appeared first on SD Times.

GraphQL offers more precise querying, which is useful when working with large APIs that return a lot of data, according to Postman.

Postman v7.2 supports sending GraphQL queries in the request body, GraphQL variables and GraphQL query autocompletion. Additionally, GraphQL support paired the recent release of schema support and building APIs directly in Postman means users can now create and store GraphQL schemas directly in Postman itself, the team explained

“GraphQL is a crucial spec that has been growing in popularity and we’re excited to support developers whose workflow involves testing GraphQL APIs,” Postman wrote in a post.

Compuware expands CI/CD with machine learning and Git integration
Compuware expanded its CI/CD solution with the addition of advanced analytics software zAdviser as well as Git integration and customized expert services.

With the combination of zAdviser and ISPW, the company’s CI/CD solution, customers can utilize machine learning to improve mainframe software development and delivery, Compuware explained. Meanwhile, its new customized end-to-end service, ISPW Sentry Services, will offer expert assistance with maintenance and upgrades.

“The modernization of mainframe software delivery to a state of high-performance is absolutely achievable, said Chris O’Malley, CEO of Compuware. “Companies can transform their most critical back-end platform by enabling a preferred developer experience, automating manual-process constraints, integrating with best-in-class tools and inspiring a culture of continuous improvement inspired and guided by software delivery KPIs of velocity, quality and efficiency.”

ActiveState automates builds of custom Python and Perl runtimes for Windows
ActiveState is enhancing its SaaS offering to automate builds of custom Python and Perl runtimes for Windows.

The ActiveState Platform allows users to automatically build minimal runtimes specific to their project. The result is a runtime environment with a smaller footprint that uses less resources, and offers a decreased attack surface, according to the company.

Additionally, the State Tool can be used to automatically download and install custom runtime into a virtual environment on any workstation with a single command.

“The ActiveState Platform allows developers to automate the building of runtimes from our catalog of Python and Perl packages to suit the unique needs of their projects,” said Jeff Rouse, the vice president of product management at ActiveState.

Software AG’s lightweight integration and development tool
Software AG unveiled webMethods Service Designer, a lightweight integrated design and development tool for building integrations and APIs.

This provides users a one year free trial to develop Flow services, APIs and integrations using Eclipse and to generate unit test cases for DevOps automation, according to Software AG.

“To compete, you need to harness your digital DNA by connecting business apps, devices, big data, the Internet of Things (IoT) and hybrid cloud and quickly be ready for what’s next. The webMethods Service Designer offers a lightweight possibility to do just that – be ready virtually overnight for whatever comes next,” said Stefan Sigg, chief product officer at Software AG.

The post SD Times news digest: Postman supports GraphQL, Compuware expands CI/CD, and ActiveState automates Python and Perl runtimes for Windows appeared first on SD Times.

According to the company, this is a major update that gives team leaders the ability to assign permissions at every level.

“Assigning roles and permissions to team members helps keep your team’s workflow organized and ensures that each teammate has a clear role in contributing to the development of your APIs. We know not everyone plays the same role in a team and that’s why Postman offers several roles and permissions to enable flexible team structure,” the team wrote in a post.

Some examples of the roles now available include:

• Workspace admin: who can edit workspace information such as name, summary and settings
• Workspace collaborator: who can view all resources in the workspace as well as add and remove stuff
• Team Developer: who has access to team resources

In order to take advantage of this new feature, users will have to migrate to the latest version of Postman. More information on how to do that is available here.

“Along with performance enhancements, and a better in-app learning experience, the latest release of Postman delivers the granular access management our users need to maximize operational efficiency and protect sensitive API code,” Abhinav Asthana, CEO and founder of Postman.

Additionally, the company announced its API development platform is expected to come to beta this spring.

The post Postman 7.0 released with extended roles and permissions appeared first on SD Times.