APICONTEXT LAUNCHES THE FIRST SERVICE THAT MONITORS ACTUAL API PERFORMANCE
Results show more than half of these key building blocks of the web fail every week
SEATTLE—November 12, 2013–APIContext today announced the results of the first comprehensive monitoring and analysis of the actual performance of major APIs which showed that in the last 30 days more than half of the most widely-used APIs failed.
The APIContext service, which delivers structured, complex, authenticated API calls that actually test the functionality of the API and its speed of response, reported failures for APIs from Amazon, Google, LinkedIn, Intel, Instagram, and others over the recent period.
APIs, or application programming interfaces, are some of the critical building blocks of modern websites and make it easy for developers to add data or functionality from others, such as weather information, mapping, or signing in with Facebook.
One widely-watched measure of the API economy is the list maintained by ProgrammableWeb, which started in the summer of 2005 with 32 APIs. Today it lists more than 10,000 and is continuing to grow. The largest APIs, such as Google, Twitter, Facebook, and Netlfix, deliver more than 1 billion API calls every day.
APIContext is based on research and engineering done over the last 3 years of providing API services to developers through Viafo. In addition to public reporting on widely-used APIs, APIContext provides developers, enterprises and API owners with private end-to-end API performance testing and monitoring services. With an easy-to-use web interface, API calls can be tested and then scheduled to run on a specified schedule, with custom reports available for integration into Web services and properties.
According to David O’Neill, founder of APIContext, “Other services check that an API is online by pinging the address and reporting the latency of the ping. APIContext tests actual performance, which is really the only thing that matters whether you’re providing an API for others to use or you use an API to provide information and functionality to your customers and their sites.”
According to Kin Lane, author of the API Evangelist blog and a consultant to companies launching API initiatives, “Nearly every major website today either provides data to others through an API or consumes an API to deliver functionality to their users. Many do both and use multiple APIs, all of which make identifying problems with APIs critical. APIContext is the first service I’ve seen that measures the actual performance of APIs in a way that matches how individuals and companies experience APIs.”
According to APIContext, some of the APIs that experienced failures during the last 30 days included . . .
- Amazon OAuth 2.0 dialog
- GitHub OAuth 2.0 dialog
- Google OAuth 2.0 dialog
- Intel Cloud Services OAuth 2.0 dialog
- Facebook Share
- LinkedIn OAuth 2.0 Share
- Instagram User Profile Fetch
The current status of these and other selected APIs is at https://apicontext.com/agents-status/
About APIContext
APIContext provides the only comprehensive monitoring and analysis of the actual performance of major APIs. In addition to reporting results on popular APIs on their site, the company provides private, end-to-end API performance testing and monitoring services to developers, enterprises, and API owners. The APImetrics approach is based on research and engineering done over the last three years of providing API services to developers through Viafo. The company is headquartered in Seattle. More information is available at www.apicontext.com.
For more information
Contact David O’Neill at [email protected] and at +1 206 972 1140.
