Modern IT infrastructure and solutions consist of a dozen components that communicate through Application Programming Interfaces or APIs. On average, the 15-years old company runs about 70 bespoke and 3rd-party solutions (Consumer-facing, CRM, Financial & Reporting, Procurement, HR management, etc.) integrated into a single ERP system to communicate with each other.
API is the building block of modern microservices-based applications. It is also an integration point of legacy software inherited from previous decades but still vital for business success. Such blocks are using for both internal and public-faced B2B integrations.
The more services company has, the challenging it becomes to develop, integrate, protect, and consume appropriate software solutions.
At scaling, the company has to address questions like:
From the development perspective, APIs provide engineers with programmatic access between two or more software systems hosted on servers, clouds, desktops, mobile, and web applications. Each technology generation has its dominate, usually standards-based API type: REST, SOAP, JAVA RMI, JDBC, COM, ODBC, CORBA (etc), or even plain files for legacy systems.
Each API implementor has its proprietary layers on top of a standard. For example, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, and Microsoft - all have Graph-style APIs over REST with their one’s unique structure, features, methods, and limitations.
The complexity of integrations increases exponentially over the time and volume of systems, which means a rise in the total cost of ownership (TCO).
There is a better Way – API Management solution like Google Cloud's Apigee, Mulesoft Anypoint, or bespoke one based on opensource Nginx.
The main idea of the API management solution is simple. It is a separate layer between applications and business systems. The same approach we can see in Cloudflare which works like a reverse-proxy between your web-site and web users, securing your Corporate assets and make it accessible.
By exposing APIs externally, companies can break into new markets and reach new customers and partners. Similarly, by exposing APIs internally, they can unlock business-critical data and leverage it throughout the organization. With API Management solution you will also be able to: