This article was written in response to: Nielsen Builds Ecosystem for App Developers

As Ms. Burnham stated in her article, having an API initiative is hardly groundbreaking. It’s good that the editors of InformationWeek did not let that technicality stop them from recognizing the boldness of the initiative from Nielsen. I applaud Nielsen’s CEO for reaching out to their app developers, partners and clients in determining requirements and needs, and then including them in developing proofs of concept and prioritizing based on their feedback. How Agile!

Given the business of Nielsen, I see this as a huge step in providing easy and reliable access to the data they collect—data that consumers need and in a form they can immediately use. Even businesses where the data is proprietary or maybe not so big would do well to look at what Nielsen is doing here.  Application programmers spend untold hours (translate that to dollars or whatever currency you like) answering the following questions:

• Where is the data?
• How do I access the data?
• Am I looking at the right data?

This is largely unproductive time. Making data available as Nielsen is doing unburdens the application programmers and allows them to do the tasks that they need to do. Companies that are implementing Application Infrastructures and Application Development Platforms should make sure that they are including some type of data infrastructure within their plans as well. Having a robust API Management Platform such as the one that Nielsen is speaking of will not only help in making the right data easily accessible to the application programmers, it will also help in keeping data secure by restricting unauthorized access via that platform. This is especially important to organizations that are wishing to implement or increase their mobile presence.

I look forward to hearing more about this initiative at Nielsen as they progress and mature their platform.