{"BaaS"}

What Makes BaaS Relevant to APIs?

Unless you are a BaaS provider or a mobile application developer, the linkage between BaaS and APIs may not be immediately clear. But once you study the space, you quickly notice that APIs are the heart of BaaS, providing platforms with the flexibility and resources they need to meet mobile developers needs.

BaaS and APIs are working together in several ways:

BaaS is a natural progression of APIs from single uses to meaningful stacks of resources for developers. As the number of APIs a developer might use in an app grew from 1 or 2, to potentially 10 separate APIs, the need for aggregation and consolidation of resources grew as well.  Mobile app developers don't have time or resources to maintain infrastructure as well as discover, qualify, integrate and maintain relationships with 10 separate API providers.  

APIs have helped identify and make available essential resources developers depend on like compute, storage, messaging and authentication, and within the BaaS framework, the next generation of essential API resources are being identified like geo, voice, targeting, friends and virtual commerce.  

There is a danger that BaaS will move us back to more rigid, platform approaches to application development, but BaaS has the potential to be a kind elastic glue, that will bring together authentication and other essential resources into a permanent or temporary, but meaningful stack for developers to put to use.