Flexibility is our trademark. We want our customers to make money on our software, and one of the ways to do this is having a system where they don't have to say no to end customer's wishes too often. For that purpose, a development environment is embedded in our solution. If we don't have the required functionalities yet, you can develop them yourself, or ask an integrator to do it. One of the new features is an API which can be used by external systems to use the FLO Suite functionalities from their own application.
Internal development procedures
A first use for this API is for development departments of printing companies that are already doing web development in other solutions, such as DotNetNuke. Rather than force them to learn how to work with a new content management system, we're offering them the means to embed web2print functionalities to the existing applications. All of this using an object model that is easy to master. This way, InDesign Server development is achievable even in your own solutions.
External applications / content management solutions
But the same might apply to existing applications of your end customers. A lot of companies offer marketing or brand management websites. They are in place at your customer's intranet, but lack the possibility for web2print or database publishing. You can offer them these services as an object model, resulting in orders being created in your prepress workflows. Resistance from the external supplier will be much lower, because there is less threath to their own marketing related services.
Concerns
A major thing to watch out for is source control. If you are developing applications within the FLO Suite development environment, you always have access to the latest sources and any developer should be able to pick this up. External applications come with their own sources, and might need different procedures to distribute these (or even create backups). This is not a concern if you are using the API within an existing development environment, or an internal development department. But it is something to consider when working with external integrators.
Another thing to consider is the supply of contentFLO applications that we provide for our customers. A lot of the new development in the DMP FLO Suite is not in the core application itself, but consists of applications that are distributed as solutions within our own content management system. Your developers might choose to use these applications as a base for their own development. But if most or all of the development efforts are focussed on an external development tool, this won't be as easy, of course.
Core business
All in all, the API can be used to bring more focus to your core business. You don't care how development is done, as long as it creates more print orders. And if that means that end users don't see that they are using your server, it really doesn't bother you.