[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
Author/Presenter: Hai Thai | Comcast | Date: December 3rd 2013
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2. Agenda
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About Comcast
Challenges within our enterprise
CodeBig objectives solve those challenges
CodeBig platform architecture and program
Results
CodeBig in practice
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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
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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 legacy systems/designs (SOAP, oneoff 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
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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
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6. Architecture
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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
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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.
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9. Xfinity TV Remote
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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)
 Developers & providers are customers
 …and don’t’ forget, HAVE FUN!
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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: */*
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