And when third parties want to integrate with your platform, well-built APIs make that integration much more straightforward and secure. Those third parties are important, and sometimes your company is the third party when you use an API to access functions in a hyperscaler’s applications (think Google or Facebook or Apple) or in the application stack at a cloud builder that also provides its own applications (think of the myriad services available at Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, or Google Cloud.) By linking to these third parties, the APIs can provide companies with new revenue streams by opening up systems to a broader range of consumers

IBM i PTF Guide