API survey results from SmartBear

SmartBear has released the results of its annual State of Software Quality API survey. First published in 2016, SmartBear has continuously surveyed the API community to identify industry benchmarks regarding the trends, best practices, methodologies, and tools used by software teams to manage the API lifecycle.

With responses from over 1,600 API professionals from more than 17 different industries globally, this year's findings show that new API standards continue to emerge to meet new challenges. The majority of API practitioners operate in this new multi-protocol landscape contributing to more complex architectures, increasing the need for tooling that drives standardization and ease of use.

"As organizations adopt new API technology, having a view into what others are doing helps our customers understand the market and adoption trends. Overall, we see new specifications coming to the market faster than existing ones will disappear, adding more complexity into the API environment. The need for tooling to meet teams where they are, agnostic of protocols and specifications, is becoming imperative in today's market," said Joanna Schloss, Senior Vice President of Product Marketing at SmartBear.

State of Software Quality | API survey results include:

• A majority of API practitioners operate in a multi-protocol landscape. Of those surveyed, 57% state they use three or more protocols within their organizations.
   
• Developers are increasingly involved in testing and are taking on more testing responsibilities with close to 60% reporting they are directly involved in API testing.
   
• "Ease of use" was reported as being the top factor driving API tool choice along with the most important characteristic consumers need in an API.
   
• The biggest obstacles to ensuring consistent quality of APIs as well as API documentation are "increasing demands for speed of delivery" and "limited time due to workload."