âšī¸What is Formata and Why
At Formata, we see a present and future where software applications use exponentially more data to perform logic and serve market demands. Traditional approaches to integrating data and orchestrating applications are being challenged, revealing a dire need for innovation in the API space.
A Brief History
Until now, receiving responses in a context foreign to your application was acceptable. This is because the context was simple - static data in one or two formats, a handful of schemas, and for one or two APIs is quite easy to create, use, and maintain.
On the API side, it was very clear what the needs of users were based on the very fixed ways one could interact with your platform. API design was more straightforward.
For applications consuming an API, they were monolithic and less dependent on other applications to be useful. Business logic was easy to maintain in one place and very few API connectors were required.
Now we're starting to feel the pain of using many APIs, but it's manageable - just hire a few more developers and abstract the implementation details amongst internal application services. Programmers are cheap, cloud infrastructure is cheap, and performance is good enough. Sure, API design is becoming much more challenging with RESTful, GraphQL, and a Wild West scenario for standards and formats. Authentication is different for each API, documentation is thin, and developers have a lot more on their plate as application architecture gets more complicated.
The technology still works though and it's really just a temporary pain. Once the integrations are built, it's not that difficult to just update it as things break or as the spec changes. However, this is beginning to not scale well.
Present Day and the Future
We've normalized our approach to building cloud-native applications as services that work together. This is more scalable, more modular (maintainable, secure, etc...), and allows for much more complex applications as services can be combined and re-utilized. However, we have yet to normalize this architecture between applications/companies. Technologies like gRPC, GraphQL, WasmCloud, (and others) exist, but the best way to consume APIs is still a well-designed REST API and SDK. This is creating a wall in the era of AI and applications consuming hundreds of APIs at once, because we're stuck in 2020 with our approach, but the world has changed. Developers are not cheap, cloud infrastructure is expensive and complicated, and performance is everything. Enter Formata...
Formata completely fills the gaps between applications, no matter how big or small. Our APIs and services are data format agnostic, providing the perfect common ground for business logic and standards that all parties can agree upon. Our lattice of services is global, load-balanced, extensible, secure, and streamlined for real-time data manipulation and modern workloads. APIs in Formata are simpler, leading to easier design, fast creation, flexibility, more security, higher performance, and new capabilities. External applications can now be safely treated as additional micro-services, sandboxed and mediated through Formata in the context of your application - in the format and schema your apps understand.
In the most basic case, we solve the integration hell, allowing you to quickly connect your application to the outside world in a scalable way. Choosing Formata as a part of your infrastructure, however, also means your application is at the cutting edge - enabling a new generation of APIs that are not limited to the protocols of the past, and a new generation of cloud-native applications that are equipped to serve tomorrow's software needs.
Keep reading to see how Formata can help you build today!
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