newspeak

Why Cloud APIs Don’t Matter – InformationWeek.

Quote:

APIs do not matter, abstractions do.

Put another way, the API is simply the way to “talk” to software that implements a specific functional part of a cloud service or business. To make this functionality easier to use, faster to develop, and more robust, the software implements its functionality in terms of a logical abstraction.

Why should anyone care?

….

It is the design of the abstractions (the logical function of the cloud services) and not the APIs that result in desirable properties such as scale, resilience, and secure self-service. For instance, in most clouds it is not possible to specify on which specific machine a virtual machine (VM) should be launched. The abstraction says that a VM will exist sometime after the run command is issued (or an error will be reported), but no indication of where the VM is residing will be provided.