Alexandre Trilla, PhD - Data Scientist |

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-- Thoughts on data analysis, software development and innovation management. Comments are welcome

NLP-Tools broadens its capabilities with a RESTful API service

18-Apr-2013

In the software tool development business, the API is the new language of the developers, i.e., the customers. In this regard, nlpTools keeps pace with the evolution of the industry market and introduces its RESTful API service to facilitate its integration. And in that quest for added-value and kaizen it partners with Mashape to handle the commercialisation issues. The original website still maintains the evaluation service, but further performance features now need to be routed through the Mashape nlpTools endpoint.

In the dark jungle of validated learning through product iteration nlpTools relies on the five keys that make a great API:

Provide a valuable service: the amount of emails asking for the API indicates that there is at least a deal of demand, it is therefore sensible to think that this is an added-value service product.
Have a plan and a business model: this a tool for the software development market offering a paid service to scale up to customer needs.
Make it simple and flexible: a domain-specific service is represented by a single identity parameter, which can be tuned to customer needs just by offering a differentiated service.
It should be managed and measured: Mashape keeps track of these measurement aspects and provides the necessary information to make informed decisions.
Provide great developer support: we are all working to deliver a wonderful experience to our customers, and considering that the service is still in its first stages, we pay a lot of attention to personalised developer support.

APIs may have nonetheless some caveats that could threaten the success of a project built around them, but most of them boil down to not having a paid option entailing a high quality of service. However, nlpTools does consider this commercial option and may thus scale up to the needs required by the developers by contracting more powerful hosting features. The added-value of the service (which is also its core business) lies in its customisation, that is its ability to adapt to the particularities of the developer's problem, such as the fitting to the specific salient characteristics that represent their data.