APIs and digital transformation: Growing your business with connected ecosystems | BRK2262
Hi. How, you guys doing today happy. Friday hope, you guys had fun last night um last, every night geez I'm. Kind of it's tired but. It, was been fun um, so I'd like to introduce Neil's history, who's, with insurance, he's, gonna be talking about the, digital transformation during, they had with using. API, is and Azure and. Thank. You. Do. You want to avoid your, company, to, become the next blockbuster. Do. You want to make sure that your company is relevant, tomorrow. And next. Year, in. An IT world, that is changing faster. And faster it's. Important, to. Create products, and services, and. Reach. Them to your customers. And partners. In. If P and C insurance, we use api's, in a very products, as. An important, part of our digital. Transformation. Journey. During. This session I will talk about our, challenges and. Our, solutions, that includes. Organizing. Our teams and. Creating. An API portal, so. That we can keep and strengthening, our position as the number one insurance partner in the, Nordic and Baltic countries. If. PNC, insurance, is the biggest insurer, in. The Nordic and Baltic countries. With. Almost, 4 million customers. Including. Some of the biggest companies in the world such as Volvo. And IKEA. We. Are really good at handling claims fast. And with satisfied, customers. We. Are about 700, employees, and, a lot of consultants. That work within IT. We. Are. Well. Our goal is to be the number one in partnerships, as I said partners. Are really important, for us. We. Have a lot of partners, and we have a lot of integrations. 402. B to, be exact, most. Of them are custom-made. And our, challenge is to make, this you. Know so. That it's not custom-made, into Asians in the future. Just. To give you some examples. We. Are partners, with. Unions. Banks. Car. Brands car. Dealers. Car. Rental companies. Car. Repair shops. Towing. Companies, mobile. Repair shops. Insurance. Partners. Or her finest, companies and. Veterinarians. In. The. Insurance chain industry, is changing a, lot and especially in, the car. Sector. This. Is important, for if since, we ensure about 20%. Of the cars in the Nordic, and Baltic, countries. Tesla. Says. That. Most company, insurance, companies, have. Too high insurance premiums because. They. Have insufficient. Data. Because. Of this they started their own Tesla. Insurance in California, I want to expand that to other US states in the future.
Because. They have got, good data onto, Tesla cars and how they are used. They. Can better predict, the risk and offer our promise, 20 to 30% slower insurance, premiums. This. Is happening with Tesla now but. It can't could happen with, other car, brands in the future. There. Is a trend in the car, sector, that. The car manufacturers, are not content, with just making the cars. They. Want to be more involved, in the car ownership. Starting. With online purchase. And then offer services, such as, fueling. Service. And cleaning. Self-driving. Cars and there's. Software. They. Want to offer their mobility, platform. And, value-adding, services. This. Is important, for if since, we have a strong relationship, with their car brands or the. Car dealers, and that's. Relationship. Might, be different in future because of this plant an. Example. Of this trend is Volkswagens. New sales, model that, they will launch next year in, this. Sales model they. Will sell the car online and, then. They, will be part of almost every, step of the car customer, journey. Starting. With, the purchase. This. Is important, for it because. Usually. The insurance is, packaged, at the part of something else in this case. A car. You. Can buy an insurance when. You are at the car dealer buying your car but. If volkswagen, is kind, of moving. That, customer. Journey, then. If needs. To make sure that. They are present in that customer, journey. So. Our challenges can be described as this. Our. Partners, are becoming, more and more important. It. Can, it is a part of our product and it. Was also a distribution channel. The. Partners, are becoming more and more digitalized, so they offered. IT. Services, that, we must integrate with and. If. Must, also provide the digital. Services, of our own so, they the, partners can integrate with us. Before. If, it has put their UI in, some of the partners services. But. Nowadays the. Partners more and more want to control the UI so. If must find another way to integrate. With. The partner. The. Partners, are, becoming more impatient. Doing. Custom. Solutions. When. Integrating, with partners, takes, a lot of time and. A. Lot of effort of course. So. The solution, to these challenges, for. If, was. To create an API, platform because, of the following reasons. We. Could be. More innovative. When. We find, out new ways to work with, partners. And, within. If. We. Could reduce the, time to market. Instead. Of building a custom-made solution, for the partner, we, could offer them, and. Read. The API so that they, can start.
Integrating With, it from scratch. We. Could drive the, conversation in. Negotiations. And offer. A, technical. Product. And. We. Could reduce the cost of, development. So instead. Of having to, to. Do the expensive, development for each partner. We. Could just say. This, is. Our API this is how we use it one. Bank said, that they would reduce, the development cost by. Four to one percent when, they started using api's. So. This is how we look at AP, is with an if. The. Foundation, is the, api's. That. Enables, digitization. When. We can connect, with partners, and exchange, data. That. Enables, digitalization. When, we can create an API, platform. That. Allows us to improve. Our, existing, business models and save, money and. That. Enables. Digital, transformation. When. We can create a pair product. So. That we can create. New business models that was, not possible. Before. And. A. Pair product is a set of api's that, is offered as a package. The. Concept. Of an api product is a bit challenging because. It, forces, us to have knowledge of the api's in, the whole organization. It. Forces, us to, change, the mindset of an API from, something, technical. To. A product and then a competitive. Advantage. And. It. Forces us to change the direct dialogue, with the partner from, what. Would you like to do to, you this. Is. What we can offer you today. But. Having, the, api's they. Buy products, and the API profit platform. Is not enough. We. Must create an organization. That, allows us to work with eight guys in a smooth way we. Must have sales and service partners. The. Talks with. Existing, partners, and invest. Investigates, new partnerships. They. Talk about contracts. And. Commissions. For. Use of the big. Guys, we. Must have an API product, management team. That. Prioritize, the, API, development, and, creates. The API products, which. Is a set. Of api's that. Could be packaged with the reporting. For instance. And. We must have an API, platform, team. That. Maintains, and improves the, API platform and. Make. Sure that the partners have correct access, and that. They have. Architecture. And guidelines, for, the API teams and. They. Buy API teams, are building. The actual API so. This could be anything from a. Big team that. Delivers the core insurance, platform, or a small. Team that. Creates. A small but interesting, micro.
Service. So. In a good API, platform, it, should be easy to onboard new. And existing partners. They should be able to discover, which. API is are available, to them and. Off the depth they. Should be able to order access, to that API, in the same way as on the other business-to-business. Product, and. After. That they. Should be able to start developing first. In the test environment and later. In, production. The. Fact that we have an API. Platform, does not mean that every, partner have access, to all api's. Some. Api's are open, for, instance, get. A list of all if offices. Or. Get. A list of all approved. Car repair shops in my area. Some. Api's. Might. Be visible to all partners. But. The partner must apply, and get approved before they can use them and, some. Sensitive, api's, are. Only visible to selected. Partners. After. Searching a lot online for. A good way to build an API that form we decided, to use a sure API, management. Because. It contained, a lot, of functionality that would be useful for us and. Fix it well in our technology stack. Pressure. API management is a service, that allows, you to publish your API so. That your partners can. Use them. We. Could use the, user management parts. To. Specify which users have. Access to each API based. On a group membership. They. Also create the subscriptions, that are needed to and call, the API. You. Could use the policy management part. To. Apply logic such as security. Caching. And mock. Data. On. Top of the advice we. Could specify that. The logic, could be run for a specific, operation. For. One API overall. Api's. We. Could use. The developer. Portal, that contains. Up-to-date. Information about, the API and. Allows. The customer, and partner. To. Try the the. API and see. What it returns in different scenarios. We. Could use monitoring, to see the, performance, and errors, of the api's. And the platform. Thanks. To application. Inside. It's. Possible, to connect it. Well. It's, possible to. See. When something is wrong and, create. Dashboards. And, alerts. On. The. Big level, architecture. The, IP API gateway or the. API service. API. Management service. Consists. Of an API gateway, that is handling. The actual calls and the. API portal we put both of them behind the web application, firewall. Because. We didn't want to create a separate firewall, for all the backend API and. The. Back in api's can be hosted in a sure. In. Our on-premise, data centers, or in. Other cloud providers. So. The API, platform. Team put a lot of effort into. The following areas. Monitoring. So that we can see the traffic the. Status of the traffic for the platform, and. For. Each API. They. Prided, logging. And. They. Provide. A login for the platform. And for, each, back-end, API. Thanks. Application, insights we could connect a, call. To the platform, with, a call to the backend API and, a. Call to the database and if, the there is a problem somewhere it's easy to see what, caused it. Before. Each. Team. Can put their API into production they must first pass the, API approval, process. The. Goal of this process is to, make. It. As smooth as possible. But. Still verify, that the API meets, all important. Criteria. The. Team put a lot of effort, into. Making the process with, producer. Onboarding, meaning. The teams that produce is the backend API is as. Smooth as possible. The. Goal here, is to allow. The. Back-end, team that develops the backend API to. Create a new or publish. The. API into the platform, and make changes, to it without. An approval, from their platform, team or anyone, else. If. The team needs to deploy on, the Sunday. Morning they, don't. Want to wait until Monday to get an approval because, they will get very upset if, that is the case. Now. I will begin my, demo. I. Have. Two demos. But. I will. My. Second M it takes a few minutes to. To. Complete so I will start with. That I will update. See. Top file and saying, hello. Microsoft. Ignite. 1317, is the, time right now and, I, will commit and I. Will. Push that in the source control and I, will get back there into this and in. A few minutes. So. For my first demo I'm in the role of a no not. So technical. Member. Of the API, product. Manager, team and I. Want to I. Want. To see the status of the, API platform, see, the traffic. You see if there's any problems somewhere, so. We created a power, bi, report. The. Third person can see so, here we can see the. Durations. Average, duration of the recalls to the API and we can see the response. Codes, in different colors. So. This is the development environment and this seems to be some problems right now so the team has something, to fix. Here. We can see the traffic so here on this side is the the, product itself and on. This side we, have the backend. API so we, can see which, products. Are popular and cause a lot, of traffic, and. Here we can see the. Actual. Problems. With, some. Operations. That are not found I. Mentioned. The health checks. In. Regards. To the, monitoring. So. The health check is a way to make, sure that the. API is working. So. It could be that, it. Makes a call to.
Database. To see that that is working fine it could be. All to a web. Service that it's dependent, upon and. So. This is the kind of the status of the calls to the health checks so, by using health check we, don't have to involve, a customer to see that something is wrong we, can see that. Something is wrong like. Immediately, when, a database goes downs for instance so. Here we can see that from this, and this data center. The. The. API seems to be offline and here we can see it the duration. Of, the. Different, health checks and as. I said they. Have sex might do different things like for a simple health check it could just be, responding. That everything is okay and another, health check it could be calling. To. The database and other services, so, it's not so important, that every health checks take the, same amount of time but we can see a trend here and way and actual. Data. Now. For my second demo. Right. Now I mean the role of a member. Of a team, that is developing, an, API. And. There. Is a, trend. In the car, industry. That. Cars, get into accidents. And. The. Car has a lot safety, systems that could have been prevented. That could prevents that accident, but. Unfortunately. The. Car safety, system, was not, activated. So. The API. That the team produces. Takes. Registration. Number or a vehicle. Identification, number, and then, it returns. To. Safety systems that. You have on your car. Maybe. You. Bought, the car secondhand, anagen, you don't know what safety. Systems you have on your car or, maybe. You, forgot what, the salesman, said when you bought your car. So. This is the. API. This. Nice. User, interface you can see that this, is. Is. Published. In Asher and I. Need. To, approve. My signing. New quests. As. You can see this, API. To. Watch, it you must right. Now be signed in as a few, sir. Yes. Now, I can see the, documentation, for the API so. There's two operations. One. For the vehicle identification number. And one, for. Regular. Registration. Number, so, I can click and. I can see the, input. The. Request and, the. Response so. Here is an example, and. There's, also a schema, that we can. Click. And see the. Difference, well. Basically. The. Definition of the response. So. I have. This it's, an Asscher but. Now I want to put this into the API. Platform so, our partners. Can start using it and. I'm. Using a, product. Called swashbuckle. To. Generate this interface, and. That. Can also generate, a, contract. For my API. It. Looks like. This. It's. Called open. API. Specification. And. This is version 3, it's. Not so it's, simply, important, but one. Way to, specify an. API. In, the. API. Management. Platform. Is to send a contract to, contract like, this one. To. Assure, so. What we want to do is, we. Want to generate. This, contract, and somehow. Send. That. Contract. To Asha. So. I'm using. Azure. DevOps, for. This. So. I have a, build pipeline. That. Is. It's. Just taking. The. Code and builds it it's. Nothing. Special about it, but. Special. Is the release pipeline. So. Here we have. The. Release, to development. It. Creates, the contract, and, then. It, calls a, custom-made, task made by the API. Platform, team. And. Here, we say that, we are in the test environment. The. Name of the API is car, safety systems. The. URL, to the API begins, with car, safety systems, and we. Are use this is version 1 of that API and. Here. We have. The. Contract, for, the API, itself, and. Here we have the contract. For the, health check. We. Could have a separate. Application inside, but I don't have that right now and.
We're. Using back-end, authentication. Meaning, that the. Platform, will send this key, to. Our back-end, API, and. The. Request will, be authorized, based, on that key and we. Want to deny. Like, random, users that are trying to call our API, and don't because. They don't know this key. So. Why. Don't we look. And. See, the. Process of our release. As. You can see that, started, right. Well. But. Now, so. We. Were successful in creating the. Contract, and we. Were successful in, calling. Or. Putting. That a contract. Into the API. Management, instance. That took four, minutes and eight seconds, and after, that we, deployed the, code to, Asha. So. Let's look at the. Developer. Portal. For. For. The our API. Platform. So. I am looking at API, products, and I, am. Logging in. So. This is the, the. Old portal. Understand. That looking feel of the old portal, so, right, now we have this. New portal available, that is much more beautiful and, much more easy to. Customize so. Try that because. There it's, not so beautiful-beautiful, this, one we. Have a product in a way that I created before, it's. Called core safety, and it's a collection of API, it's related, to car safety and before. I put our. API, into, that this product so, we can navigate to, it here and you can see that this. User has a subscription to, that API, and, I, will use this key later, when I make the calls. So. Here we can see. The. Message. That. I wrote hello Microsoft, ignite. 1317, and. It's, at the same way we saw. The documentation. For. The API here. When we're calling, the API, directly, we. Can see the documentation. For the API in. The developer. Portal, and. We, can see. The. Responses. Even some simple. Code examples, and so on and. In. The same way we can try. Calling this API. You. Can specify a, registration, number, and. We can select a. Subscription. Key. That. Was related, to our script subscription. That is needed. And. We. Call it and we, can see. That. On my. Car I have, three. Different safety, systems. Large. Animal detection cyclist. Detection and, small animal. Detection. So. What we did in, this second, demo is that we made a change, in the code of. The. API, and. We generated, a contract, and, we. Put that contract. Into. API, management, and. At. The same time we deployed the code asher, so. In this kind. Of, process. There's, no way there's a difference, between. What. Is running in the backend API and, what's in. The documentation. In. The API portal. So. Switching. Back. So. In the future we, want to improve the platform, in, the, following ways, we. Want to improve, the. Consumer, onboarding. Of, existing. And new, partners. With. More self-service. Options, if, it, is a big partner. With. Many developers, we, will, make it possible to, have a responsible, person that, handles access, for. Each for. Each employee, so. If an employee, starts. Or. Quits that. Person, can. Make sure that, he. Has access to our, API platform. We. Want to improve the end-use, or the identification, of, the end user so. For instance if we, are sending sensitive. Information, about. Insurance. Coverage. Coverages. It's. Important, to identify that. This is actually. User that has the, right to. Access this data and we. Can also. Get. An approval, from, the end user saying, it's okay that, if sends, this information. To. This. Partner and. The. API. Platform will.
Send This, information to the. Backend API so, it's know it, knows which, user, has, approved, this. Information. We. Will improve the developer, portal as. I talked about before. Possibly. We, will, integrate. It with the CMS, that, we use within, if. We. Don't have a strong opinion on. What, technology, each API. Producing, team uses, they, can use any technology. They. Feel productive and, comfortable. With, but. In if we are publishing. Almost, all new, applications. In Azure and. We're using Web Apps the most and function. Apps quite, a bit, because. Almost, all users use, C sharp it's a good fit. To. Create web. Apps that run on asp.net, core. So. I think, this is a good time for questions. Yes. Yes. You can. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. Okay. Height. Stand, like this so. I have about a million questions, I'm Michael I work, for info, in Sweden, okay, yeah so, that's, why I was interested in talking to you of course they. The. Deployment, so. Basically what I saw you do is that you added swashbuckle, thing you got the open API definition and, you push that using your own custom, stuff to. API. Management platform, inspired. I love it that was awesome, how. Do you handle policy, updates within. API management, sorry how do you move something, from. Let's. Say. Caching. Settings, from development, into production. So. Right. Now I specified, that. I'm. Pushing, this, contract, into, the test, environments, where, I specified that in the task if. I would have had another, deploy, step to production I have, the same task. But then I would say I'm, using, the production environment instead. And. It's it is I mean. The the policy, is specified. Inside. The build so. Was. That they also take questions only wonder has nowhere, near actually so I was talking about the policies, within. API, management. So. You, mean I mean as a one. Policy, is, you. Know this, call comes, in man if a call comes in, I should send it to this I should function right and you, can solve that using open. API but. Then there are other things like, say. Validate. Your token, or. Call. Out to this login environment. Over here to log something that is usually a part of the policy, settings in API. Management and you, show me things. That you can do with the open API how do you migrate, those, policy, settings, from dev to, test into production. Because. Everyone that's in here knows that the EC ICD story with the API management it's, not, area. Right. So. You, kind of showed me a new way to do.
This, So. Let's. Look at the, build. Or. Deployment, step actually. No. Yeah we have different, instances for, for, the different than why I'm a security reasons, and. So. Let's look at this one again so. Here. I can specify a custom policy. Meaning. That I could have, yes. It's, basically part of something that you built that is custom built for you guys, yeah, okay, sure I didn't see that so that's the answer to that question and. Then the. Next question is. Especially. Working with car companies, and I worked, some with one of those car companies, you mentioned as, we're both from the same country okay so. You you're, basically saying you cut your costs. A lot by not making special arrangements. However. My. Experiences. Tells, me that each and every car. Company things. To say they're, like you if you want to integrate with us you have to use our way of doing this and then, if you move over to like Ford or Hertz or whatever they, say oh it's easy just use our API platform, who. Decides, on what platform to use and why. That's. A good question, and, they yes, of. Course there is a conflict here I witnessed. And. I. Guess it's about, negotiations. But. If I mean if we have the. Possibility, if we have an API the. Chances, that they. Are using it or much. Higher compared. To if we didn't have an API at all than we are we. Can only make customized, solutions. But it's it's a it's a difficult question yeah, so it's it's, a thing that. It's. Better for you guys to have. For that you can offer to clients rather than force, them to to, use it yeah yeah I, have a couple of questions. More about I think I should take them with you kind of offline if you don't mind yeah sure I, will. Be here after the presentation, and I will show my my, email address if. Someone. Wants to send. Me an email. So. Continuing. To. Summarize, the contents, of this session I can say that. Api's. Are an, extremely, important, part of a digital transformation. Journey, and, you. Must create, a platform, that can handle the basic tasks so. That you and your employees, can. Focus, on delivering. Value and. You. Must really focus on the end-to-end, lifecycle. Of your api's, and. Logging. And monitoring, of your api's and the platform, is important, because. You want to detect if something is wrong and fix it so. The customers, can have a good experience.
Using, Your products. What. We learned, with. Our work with API is that it's, really important, to have a good. Onboarding, process, for both the partners. And. The. Teams that produce the, api's if. The. Process is not so good there's. A big chance that these. People will, stop using the. API platform and, you. Must create an organization. That. Can handle the. Api's. You. Must have teams that can talk. To the partners. Create. The API products. Maintain. And improve the, a pear cut form and teams. That, can produce the. Backend API so. This. Is my email. Address. To. Send me an email if you want to, ask me something and I will get back to you. At. Least. Evaluate. This session it means a lot to me and thank. You for coming.
2020-01-17 00:25
