Customer Engagement Needs APIs, But REST Is Far From A Complete Integration Strategy

A cornerstone of any firm's BT agenda is flexible application integration. Application programming interfaces (APIs) — and specifically representational state transfer (REST) APIs — dominate much of today's industry discussion about application integration. Forrester often hears discussion about REST framed as though most, if not all, other ways of doing integration are passé and fit only for the dustbin of history. In sharp contrast to this hype, Forrester finds a different story told by respondents to our developer surveys. Application developers tell us that while use of REST is indeed important and growing quickly, their organizations continue to invest in a variety of other styles of integration and service-based messaging. This report draws on a wide base of data to demonstrate why application development and delivery (AD&D) pros should build broad-based integration strategies aimed at a variety of business scenarios and the need for sustainable business agility.