> How bot-to-bot could soon replace APIs (by @nikonelissen)
Today when two software systems have to talk to each other, software developers need to implement an integration using APIs (application programming interfaces). This integration process is time consuming. That’s why, over the last couple of years, services such as Zapier, Scribe, and IFTT have become popular. They provide out-of-the-box interfaces to hundreds of software applications, allowing you to connect, for example, your CRM system with a mailing tool or analytics platform.
In the bot-to-bot era, however, each software application can talk to each other system, regardless of whether they have an actual API integration in place. Granted, bot-to-bot communication will not be used to exchange large amounts of data, but it will allow for ad-hoc communication between, for example, my banking software and a web shop. My banking software could talk to the webshop bot and ask for that missing invoice: “Niko needs an invoice for order 45678, can you provide that?”