Software is eating the world. It’s a phrase that is becoming increasingly popular with a large number of organisations— and it’s true. Look around. Hundreds of new mobile apps appear on a daily basis. These apps are not just about games and entertainment, many target the consumer and the business to business (B2B) segment. The explosion in mobile apps has come about through a series of shifts in how software is architected and designed. Many enterprise, software, or system architects looking to take advantage of software as a competitive differentiator find it hard to know where to start. The key is to expose internal systems to partners, customers and third parties through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), which make it easy for developers to connect systems together. It sounds easy, but the truth is that getting started is not as simple as just opening the doors and allowing a feeding frenzy against core systems. The good news is, from an architect’s perspective, there are many things that can be done to build a successful API architecture