The structure of business websites or applications has been transformed into a new model that is fast and responsive. The new model has replaced the traditional monolithic applications with microservices and containerization.
The micro-services, along with API, have eliminated the complexity and latency associated with the business services. They have become the foundation for rapidly developing innovative application components to meet new business needs. The approach is referred to as cloud-native application development. As cloud adoption continues, these applications have become more light and powerful.
When you use an API, you want to ensure that it is well-documented and reliable, but besides that, you need a dashboard for analytics, a gateway that acts as a proxy, high availability, etc. This is where you need API management.
What is API management ?
API management is a process for controlling, distributing, and analyzing the APIs that connect applications and data across the enterprise and across clouds. Organizations are implementing strategies to manage their APIs so they can respond to rapid changes in customer demands.
The API management is mainly about centralizing control of your API program—including analytics, monetization, access control, and developer workflows.
Why you need API management
The API management services come with a lot of features. T
The primary purpose of API management is to make designing, deploying, and managing an API easier, as well as to ensure that it is safe, secure, and functional.
When two or more APIs are talking to each other, there will be inconsistency in terms of data-sets and restrictions. For consistent data exchange, you need API management.
Through an API management solution, an organization can ensure that both the public and internal APIs they create are consumable and secure.
Security is a critical aspect for companies when they expose their backend systems via APIs. APIs require strong documentation, comprehensive testing, increased levels of security, routine versioning, and high reliability.
If an API is evoked multiple times for data retrieval, it is not possible to verify data requests on an individual basis. It may cause unnecessary queuing up of your requests. By using an automated gateway with conditional authority, this issue can be mitigated.
API management platform architecture
The core component of API management is an API gateway. It covers all the technical features needed for layered API architecture. Whereas, the additional functionality is used to make API developer-friendly.
(image source: apiacademy)
API portal
API portal can be segmented into two categories: an API publisher portal and Developer Portal. Through the publisher portal, the administrators publish the APIs; once the API is published, it is ready to be consumed by outside developers. The developers use the developer portal to get access to these APIs. In simple words, API owners and developers use the portal to successfully deploy and onboard their APIs. API portal is also known as a community manager.
API lifecycle management
APIs should be manageable from design, through implementation, until retirement. API Lifecycle Management represents all steps in the life of an API, from creation to retirement
API policy manager
It is an administrative component that controls the lifecycle of policies used to define and manage the API. Many API management platforms provide users with extra-ordinary policies that control API traffic, improve performance, enhance security, and increase the value of the API
API analytics
The API analytics platform provides various dashboards to report business analytics as well as the operational aspects. The analytics platform provides in-depth views of the API usage and can provide insights into the usage patterns and trends. It helps businesses to decide whether to monetize the API. It is also imperative to know the number of API failures.
API gateway
The gateway sits between API publishers and API consumers (developers) and provides the controlled access to the back end services/API. It determines how clients interact with APIs through the use of policies. API gateway acts as a proxy so that APIs do not have to interact with client applications directly.
Some popular API management tools
The API management tools maintain the uniformity between multiple API implementations and versions. It helps to monitor traffic from individual apps as well as provide caching mechanisms and memory management to enhance application performance. The big advantage of API management tools is to make it safe from misuse by enveloping them with strong security policies.
Here some popular API management tools.
MuleSoft
Apigee
Oracle SOA
Mashery
3Scale
WSO2
Microsoft’s Azure
The structure of business websites or applications has been transformed into a new model that is fast and responsive. The new model has replaced the traditional monolithic applications with microservices and containerization.
The micro-services, along with API, have eliminated the complexity and latency associated with the business services. They have become the foundation for rapidly developing innovative application components to meet new business needs. The approach is referred to as cloud-native application development. As cloud adoption continues, these applications have become more light and powerful.
When you use an API, you want to ensure that it is well-documented and reliable, but besides that, you need a dashboard for analytics, a gateway that acts as a proxy, high availability, etc. This is where you need API management.
What is API management ?
API management is a process for controlling, distributing, and analyzing the APIs that connect applications and data across the enterprise and across clouds. Organizations are implementing strategies to manage their APIs so they can respond to rapid changes in customer demands.
The API management is mainly about centralizing control of your API program—including analytics, monetization, access control, and developer workflows.
Why you need API management
The API management services come with a lot of features. T
The primary purpose of API management is to make designing, deploying, and managing an API easier, as well as to ensure that it is safe, secure, and functional.
When two or more APIs are talking to each other, there will be inconsistency in terms of data-sets and restrictions. For consistent data exchange, you need API management.
Through an API management solution, an organization can ensure that both the public and internal APIs they create are consumable and secure.
Security is a critical aspect for companies when they expose their backend systems via APIs. APIs require strong documentation, comprehensive testing, increased levels of security, routine versioning, and high reliability.
If an API is evoked multiple times for data retrieval, it is not possible to verify data requests on an individual basis. It may cause unnecessary queuing up of your requests. By using an automated gateway with conditional authority, this issue can be mitigated.
API management platform architecture
The core component of API management is an API gateway. It covers all the technical features needed for layered API architecture. Whereas, the additional functionality is used to make API developer-friendly.
(image source: apiacademy)
API portal
API portal can be segmented into two categories: an API publisher portal and Developer Portal. Through the publisher portal, the administrators publish the APIs; once the API is published, it is ready to be consumed by outside developers. The developers use the developer portal to get access to these APIs. In simple words, API owners and developers use the portal to successfully deploy and onboard their APIs. API portal is also known as a community manager.
API lifecycle management
APIs should be manageable from design, through implementation, until retirement. API Lifecycle Management represents all steps in the life of an API, from creation to retirement
API policy manager
It is an administrative component that controls the lifecycle of policies used to define and manage the API. Many API management platforms provide users with extra-ordinary policies that control API traffic, improve performance, enhance security, and increase the value of the API
API analytics
The API analytics platform provides various dashboards to report business analytics as well as the operational aspects. The analytics platform provides in-depth views of the API usage and can provide insights into the usage patterns and trends. It helps businesses to decide whether to monetize the API. It is also imperative to know the number of API failures.
API gateway
The gateway sits between API publishers and API consumers (developers) and provides the controlled access to the back end services/API. It determines how clients interact with APIs through the use of policies. API gateway acts as a proxy so that APIs do not have to interact with client applications directly.
Some popular API management tools
The API management tools maintain the uniformity between multiple API implementations and versions. It helps to monitor traffic from individual apps as well as provide caching mechanisms and memory management to enhance application performance. The big advantage of API management tools is to make it safe from misuse by enveloping them with strong security policies.
Here some popular API management tools.
MuleSoft
Apigee
Oracle SOA
Mashery
3Scale
WSO2
Microsoft’s Azure
The structure of business websites or applications has been transformed into a new model that is fast and responsive. The new model has replaced the traditional monolithic applications with microservices and containerization.
The micro-services, along with API, have eliminated the complexity and latency associated with the business services. They have become the foundation for rapidly developing innovative application components to meet new business needs. The approach is referred to as cloud-native application development. As cloud adoption continues, these applications have become more light and powerful.
When you use an API, you want to ensure that it is well-documented and reliable, but besides that, you need a dashboard for analytics, a gateway that acts as a proxy, high availability, etc. This is where you need API management.
What is API management ?
API management is a process for controlling, distributing, and analyzing the APIs that connect applications and data across the enterprise and across clouds. Organizations are implementing strategies to manage their APIs so they can respond to rapid changes in customer demands.
The API management is mainly about centralizing control of your API program—including analytics, monetization, access control, and developer workflows.
Why you need API management
The API management services come with a lot of features. T
- The primary purpose of API management is to make designing, deploying, and managing an API easier, as well as to ensure that it is safe, secure, and functional.
- When two or more APIs are talking to each other, there will be inconsistency in terms of data-sets and restrictions. For consistent data exchange, you need API management.
- Through an API management solution, an organization can ensure that both the public and internal APIs they create are consumable and secure.
- Security is a critical aspect for companies when they expose their backend systems via APIs. APIs require strong documentation, comprehensive testing, increased levels of security, routine versioning, and high reliability.
- If an API is evoked multiple times for data retrieval, it is not possible to verify data requests on an individual basis. It may cause unnecessary queuing up of your requests. By using an automated gateway with conditional authority, this issue can be mitigated.
API management platform architecture
The core component of API management is an API gateway. It covers all the technical features needed for layered API architecture. Whereas, the additional functionality is used to make API developer-friendly.
(image source: apiacademy)
API portal
- API portal can be segmented into two categories: an API publisher portal and Developer Portal. Through the publisher portal, the administrators publish the APIs; once the API is published, it is ready to be consumed by outside developers. The developers use the developer portal to get access to these APIs. In simple words, API owners and developers use the portal to successfully deploy and onboard their APIs. API portal is also known as a community manager.
API lifecycle management
- APIs should be manageable from design, through implementation, until retirement. API Lifecycle Management represents all steps in the life of an API, from creation to retirement
API policy manager
- It is an administrative component that controls the lifecycle of policies used to define and manage the API. Many API management platforms provide users with extra-ordinary policies that control API traffic, improve performance, enhance security, and increase the value of the API
API analytics
- The API analytics platform provides various dashboards to report business analytics as well as the operational aspects. The analytics platform provides in-depth views of the API usage and can provide insights into the usage patterns and trends. It helps businesses to decide whether to monetize the API. It is also imperative to know the number of API failures.
API gateway
- The gateway sits between API publishers and API consumers (developers) and provides the controlled access to the back end services/API. It determines how clients interact with APIs through the use of policies. API gateway acts as a proxy so that APIs do not have to interact with client applications directly.
Some popular API management tools
The API management tools maintain the uniformity between multiple API implementations and versions. It helps to monitor traffic from individual apps as well as provide caching mechanisms and memory management to enhance application performance. The big advantage of API management tools is to make it safe from misuse by enveloping them with strong security policies.
Here some popular API management tools.
- MuleSoft
- Apigee
- Oracle SOA
- Mashery
- 3Scale
- WSO2
- Microsoft’s Azure
