Comcast Codebig: An API Platform & Program [my speech at the AADI conference]

[This is the slide for my speech at the AADI conference]

Driving innovation throughout a large technology-driven veteran company in a competitive industry is no easy task. Comcast has many engineering groups with a lot of APIs, providers and developers – more than 1500, in fact. This creates a bit of a scattering effect with regard to our technology. Despite this, we’ve been focused on enhancing and/or replacing legacy systems and designs (SOAP, one-off Web interfaces/systems) and shifting our services model to one that is more mobile/device centric. Major hurdles have included slow integration/syndication across consumer and service provider services, and the lack of a consistent security model allowing controlled data sharing and system integration.

Comcast’s effort to overcome these challenges and build a developer & provider community and network from its current infrastructure state – replete with duplicate APIs and effort in some cases – is called CodeBig. Through this unified combination of best-in-class technology and best practices, CodeBig aims to overcome our challenges of API scattering/duplication, integration/security models and legacy Web interfaces, and ultimately foster innovations and growth/deployment quickly and efficiently.

1. An API Platform & Program 1 Author/Presenter: Hai Thai | Comcast | Date: December 3 rd 2013

2. Agenda About Comcast Challenges within our enterprise CodeBig objectives solve those challenges CodeBig platform architecture and program Results CodeBig in practice 2

3. About Comcast Fortune’s 2013 top 100 companies NBCUniversal is now part of Comcast Recently turned 50 years old, over 125,000 employees spread throughout the world More than just a cable company, also a media, software/technology company Promotes and drives innovation to create the world's best entertainment and online experiences 3

4. Challenges Comcast as a large technology-driven veteran company, driving innovation in a competitive industry certainly has many challenges Many engineering groups with a lot of APIs, providers and developers (1500+) – scattering effect Enhancing and/or replacing l egacy systems/designs (SOAP, one-off Web interfaces/systems) – shifting to mobile/device centric Slow integration/syndication (using VPN, custom authentication - lengthy process, resource intensive) on both consumer side and service/API provider side Establishing a consistent security model for data sharing and system integration in a controlled manner Building a developer & provider community/network – duplicate APIs and effort in some cases 4

5. Objectives CodeBig (5 years old) is built as an API platform & program to overcome important challenges: API scattering/duplication, lack of API management, inefficient integration process & inconsistent security models – ultimately to foster innovations and growth/deployment quickly and efficiently API management as infrastructure (platform) layer Separation between API core and security Capacity management (caching, rate limiting, traffic control ) Std. security , scale & flexibility (access and control options) Easy and quick integration for data sharing and integration API program Useful, easy-to-use developer tools Developer & consumer community/network (portal) Evangelization of RESTful style (pragmatic & hypermedia) – mobile/device centric 5

6. Architecture 6

7. Results API management platform with catalog of 80+ APIs (~1.6b requests/month and growing for both APIs and traffic) Significantly faster integration/syndication between internal/external developers and providers – from a month or so to a few days, 30 minutes in some cases Standard secured data access and API management as a service – OAuth 1.0a/2.0 standard Analytics, stateless, rate limiting (protection/capacity mgt.), caching layers (Akamai edge & Mashery ), traffic control CodeBig portal and tools/scripts for both developers and providers to use, share, learn, analyze and monitor APIs Evolution of pragmatic & hypermedia REST APIs managed and protected by CodeBig 7

8. In Practice XCMA (Xfinity Connect Mobile App) & Xfinity Portal call logs, voicemail, Voice 2go & text messaging Xfinity TV Remote Browse, tune and record show from the mobile and portal app Xfinity TV Go Watch live TV channels (35 channels, more to come) Twitter & Comcast interconnection with “See It” Tune, watch or record the show from a tweet Apps on X1 set-top boxes Caller ID, voicemail, weather, news, etc. 8

9. Xfinity TV Remote 9

10. Last Few Points “ Use the Web as it was designed” i.e. RESTful style; pragmatic or hypermedia whenever makes sense New product (e.g. CodeBig as an API platform/program) incurs other challenges: education, awareness & usage Establish simple & fast on-boarding, change, etc. processes Simplify API design (easy to consume and troubleshoot) D evelopers & providers are customers …and don ’ t’ forget, HAVE FUN! 10

11. Contact Connected to Hai Thai (author/presenter). Escape character is '^]'. GET / comcast /engineering/ neto / ssd / hai_thai HTTP/1.1 User-Agent: Comcast NBCUniversal Host: corporate.comcast.com X -Email: hai_thai@ cable.comcast.com X-Skype-ID: hai_thai Accept : */ * 11

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