API integration is the work that actually matters to the business — the connecting of systems through APIs to accomplish real outcomes — and it’s the part of the API story that the producing-obsessed industry has consistently underserved. For all the attention lavished on building and managing APIs, the business value of an API is only realized when someone integrates it into something that does useful work: connecting a CRM to a billing system, wiring a payment API into a checkout flow, syncing data between platforms, automating a workflow across services. Integration is the consuming side made concrete, the point where APIs stop being capabilities and become connected systems delivering value. I’ve argued increasingly that integration is where the business actually cares, and that the API industry’s relentless focus on the producing side has left the consuming, integration side underserved relative to its importance.
The integration-is-what-matters argument is one I’ve made most forcefully in recent years, and it’s a genuine reframe. I wrote in 2025 that API integrations are what matter to business — pushing back on the industry’s fixation on API management and the producing side. A business leader doesn’t care about your API management platform or your governance rules; they care about whether the systems connect and the work gets done. Integration is where the API delivers business value, and it’s the lens through which the business actually experiences APIs. The Kong conversation I published in 2025 about API integrations being dead captured a provocative version of this — the argument that the traditional integration model is being disrupted — but the underlying point reinforces the importance of integration: it’s the thing everyone is actually trying to accomplish, even as the methods for achieving it evolve. Integration is the goal; APIs are the means.
The iPaaS dimension is where integration became a business category, and I tracked it closely while wrestling with its limits. Integration Platform as a Service — iPaaS — emerged as the cloud-native evolution of the old ETL and enterprise integration tooling, providing platforms for connecting APIs and automating workflows across them. I wrote about the iPaaS opportunities available for API providers, about wanting to build an iPaaS solution, and about the long struggle for reciprocity as ETL evolved into cloud iPaaS. The iPaaS model recognized that integration is a distinct, valuable category of work that deserves dedicated tooling — platforms whose whole purpose is connecting APIs and orchestrating the flows between them. The business of integration is substantial precisely because integration is hard, ongoing work that every organization needs, which creates a real market for the platforms and services that make it easier.
The democratization of integration through no-code and low-code is one of the most significant developments, and I championed it. Zapier and IFTTT made integration accessible to non-developers — letting ordinary people connect APIs and automate workflows without writing code. I wrote extensively about Zapier over the years, including using it in my own business, because it represented something genuinely important: integration was no longer the exclusive domain of developers. When anyone can connect two APIs to automate a task, the consuming and integration side of APIs reaches an enormous audience that the developer-focused world never touched. This democratization is a big part of why integration matters so much to business — because the people who need systems connected are often not developers, and the no-code integration platforms gave them the ability to do it themselves. Integration became something the whole organization could participate in, not just the engineering team.
The strategy dimension is where integration becomes deliberate rather than ad-hoc, and it’s a discipline I’ve pushed organizations toward. I wrote in 2024 about developing your API integration strategy — because most organizations approach integration reactively, connecting systems one-off as needs arise, rather than strategically. A real integration strategy thinks about the portfolio of systems that need to connect, the patterns and platforms for connecting them, the governance of how integrations are built and maintained, and the dependencies that integration creates. Applying domain-driven design to integration and consumption, which I wrote about in 2025, is part of maturing integration from ad-hoc wiring into a disciplined practice. Integration creates dependencies and risk — every integration is a connection that can break — and treating it strategically, with the same intentionality applied to the producing side, is how organizations build reliable, maintainable connected systems rather than a brittle tangle of one-off integrations.
Where I’ve landed on integration is that it’s the long-underserved half of the API story that actually delivers the business value, and that the industry’s balance needs to shift toward it. The producing side — building and managing APIs — gets the attention, the tooling, and the conferences. But integration is where APIs become connected systems that do useful work, where the business actually experiences value, and where most of the people interacting with APIs (including the no-code crowd) actually live. The building blocks of integration, the iPaaS platforms, the no-code democratization, the integration strategy discipline, and the recognition that integration is what matters to business — these all point toward the same conclusion: the consuming and integration side deserves far more attention and investment than it has historically received. As the API economy matures, and especially as AI agents become integration actors that connect systems autonomously, the integration side only grows in importance. Integration is where the API stops being a thing you built and becomes part of a connected system delivering real outcomes — and that’s the thing the business has cared about all along, even as the API industry spent most of its energy on the producing side. The work that matters is the connecting, and integration is the discipline of doing that connecting well.
References
- API Automation For The Masses With If This Then That
- Overview Of API Integration
- What Are The Common Building Blocks Of API Integration
- Tweeting Out The iPaaS Opportunities That Are Available For Your API
- So You Wanna Build An iPaaS Solution
- Developing Your API Integration Strategy
- API Evangelist Conversation With Reza Shafii, Product Executive At Kong, About API Integrations Being Dead
- API Integrations Are What Matters To Business
- Applying Domain-Driven Design To Integration And Consumption
