Future of Software Development and DevOps

Interoperability And The Future Of Software Development

• Why don’t my content preferences on Netflix inform my Amazon Prime account? And vice versa?
  Why don’t my health care records follow me around the byzantine health care system?
  How come every time I get into my Subaru, my iPhone plays a U2 song I never downloaded, instead of remembering what I was listening to last in Spotify?
  With all the artificial intelligence (AI) present in these systems, why am I not better understood?
  Why? Because companies tend to believe that this kind of interoperability is not in their business interest. The thinking goes that putting up barriers can make a service sticky. That means not having to worry about winning a customer’s love over and over. It is this mindset that has seen a generation of startup companies burn through venture capital in a race to dominate a particular market.
  
  
  Don’t get me wrong. I love these companies and the amazing experiences they have created. But from a broad customer service perspective, the customer is so sticky that he or she is stuck: They can’t dabble with a new product. They can’t work with an adjacent or complementary service even if that drives better customer value and experience. They can’t self-integrate.
  
  
  As a result, by the standards of the possibilities my generation got excited about when we started building software 20 years ago, technology just barely works.
  The one big nut we have not yet cracked as a software development community is interoperability, which is something I am passionate about in the work my company is doing. This has to become part of our cultural DNA as all businesses become digital. One promise of interoperability is that value is amplified not only for the customer, who can enjoy the experience of connected devices and services but for the provider too. Interoperability also ensures developers remain incented to keep innovating. After all, many of the world’s major innovations originate at startups and young technology companies. Interoperability ensures those innovations can be broadly understood and developed. From electronic records in health care to tolling systems for roadways, interoperability can help drastically improve performance, cost, application and consumer benefit.
  There are three key ways that the software development community can leverage its influence and drive interoperability.
  
  
  Open Standards
  While open standards have been accepted in certain industries, they are comparatively absent in others. In retail, for example, the barcode has become the standard way of identifying a product, regardless of where it is in the supply chain or where the consumer buys it. In digital entertainment, by contrast, there is no standard way for audio and viewing preferences to be described. That means entertainment providers can’t provide the consumer with optimal viewing suggestions and the consumer’s experience is poorer as a result.
  
  
  Open APIs
  Open APIs provide developers with access to proprietary software applications or web services and allow computer programs to “talk” to one another so they can request and share information. Twitter is a case study in generating business value through open APIs. Twitter’s strategy helped birth a new industry around the aggregation and analysis of Twitter data, led by companies such as Cision and Zignal. These companies help the world’s leading brands understand social sentiment in real-time, improving customer service. As the only major social media platform with open APIs, Twitter has carved out a unique position with those brands.
  Similarly, at my company, we allow developers to access our capabilities via open APIs. In doing so, we create potential competitors. But at the same time, we ensure that certain elements of our platform, such as transparent transactions, become more prevalent in a way that we believe will foster trust and growth across our industry. As a result, we’ve contributed to the creation of an increasingly standard way for publishers to monetize their content, and for advertisers to select the ad inventory that will work best for their brand. Companies such as eBay and Stripe have used APIs to expand their market opportunity by allowing other companies to build on these industry-leading e-commerce platforms for their own offerings.
  
  
  Open Source
  Our industry is getting better at open sourcing technology in order to drive broad development, innovation and value. All the hype today around blockchain, for example, is a result of the availability of open-source software that allows companies to collaborate, experiment and determine where and how business value might be available. Linux, of course, is the grandfather of all open source projects. Starting as a hobbyist’s operating system, and then massively expanded by millions of developers worldwide, Linux is at the core of today’s cloud computing infrastructure, of advances in mobile technology and in countless industry deployments, such as the world’s air traffic control systems.
  
  
  Leading companies in the interoperability space should consider making their development projects available broadly and for free, which is something my company has done. Overall, the goal of interoperability should be to enable players to speak the same language when it comes to sharing information. In our industry, standardizing on fewer ID technologies across the advertising supply chain also makes it easier for consumers to manage their own privacy preferences. We made our technology broadly available because we believe the benefits of widescale adoption will make the entire digital advertising ecosystem more efficient and transparent. With those broad improvements, companies can compete based on their innovation, features and services. And that kind of focus is good discipline for any tech company. If a technology improves transparency and confidence in an emerging market, opening that technology up to improve the quality of an entire market, benefits all participants.
  We in the software development community have an obligation to ensure that the full value of our innovation can be unleashed. In the same way that previous economic booms were facilitated by access to open transportation and telecommunication systems, software is the new economic growth engine. But driving that growth, and realizing the business and social benefits that will accrue, requires a mindset and culture that prioritizes interoperability.