It took me a while to hop on the Game of Thrones bandwagon. Dragons? Ice Zombies? I didn’t think it would be my type of show. Then I watched the first episode, and the next, and the next… And now I’m on the edge of my seat along with everybody else as we move into season five.
It’s interesting how the show makes me feel. Along with excitement over the new episodes comes an anxiety over whether or not I’m going to have my dreams crushed again. “Game of Thrones,” more so than any show I’ve ever seen, has a way of defying narrative expectation and tossing its die-hard fans into abrupt and startling despair. We’ve rooted for heroes and seen them fail; we’ve loved families and seen them massacred. And now we’re deeply uneasy as we move forward.
From the first episode, prophecies that ‘winter is coming’ foreshadowed this landscape of instability, fear, and imminent destruction. And it ultimately has nothing to do with the deceptive political maneuvering between families in King’s Landing. The overlying tension in the show is the premonition that the chilling apocalypse is advancing from the North, and the only possible defense is Dany and her dragons approaching slowly from the South.
Fear and uncertainty is something I deeply identify with in the current business climate of cutthroat maneuvering and sudden industry disruption. Businesses are moving faster than ever before, trying to remain a step ahead of the next innovation that could replace them without warning. Facilitating this massive climate change, businesses are more willing to embrace newer technology, especially technology that delivers customer-centric value and new revenue streams by automating data connectivity.
Businesses thrive on connectivity, and one of the current technology trends for data connectivity is the acceptance of REST APIs. As a testament to this, over 20 formidable API management vendors and solutions have emerged since 2008 to help organizations manage the exchange of information within and between organizations. In fact, in just a few short years APIs seem to have a credibility and momentum that traditional SOA was never able to achieve.
However, for traditional SOA and API solutions alike, winter is coming. API solutions designed for developers are already on the verge of being replaced by a new generation of integration platforms designed as applications for business users. In this uneasy ‘Game of Thrones’ business landscape, integration platforms that provide technology abstraction designed for non-technical users might just be the lifeline that prevents bloodshed in your company.
This raises the ultimate question: Who will stand tall above the fray when the battle finally reaches its epic climax? Who will emerge from the wreckage victorious? As for me, I’ll be rooting for Dany and her dragons.