APIs have been around since the early 70s and 80s. However, their popularity shot up with the rise of Big Data applications. As of today, APIs have gained mainstream acceptance in all types of web and mobile applications. Nevertheless, with the growing use of APIs, it has become increasingly important to maintain and manage them to deliver consistent user experiences across devices.
API management solutions are even more important for organizations that rely on APIs to offer their services to customers. That being said, having a unified software system in place is imperative to sail through the complexities of API management. In this post, we highlight the importance of API management solutions with a focus on the most crucial parameters.
Also, Read Types of APIs In Web Application Development
API Management Solutions: An Overview
API development services can save enterprises a fortune by significantly reducing development costs, not to mention the time and effort that is saved. However, the journey does not end here as API management is equally important to ensure seamless app integration and functionality. API management and maintenance must be an integral part of the business strategy as it directly impacts user experiences.
API management is the process of designing, developing, deploying, and analyzing application programming interfaces in a secure software environment. Because of the sheer value that APIs generate, it is essential to take steps to maintain them using a robust software architecture. For enterprises that rely heavily on APIs, it is advisable to develop and implement an API management software. That said, a typical API management software normally includes a series of developer tools, analytics modules, and API gateways. In the following section, we shall talk about these components in more detail.
Also, Read Benefits of API-centric Web Application Development
Essential Components of API Management
Below are the main components of API management that must be taken into account while opting for API development services.
API Design
API management solutions render complete support for designing, implementing, and deploying APIs while also providing runtime capabilities. In addition, it aids in maintaining security policies, descriptions, usage limits, and other crucial documents.
Developer Tools
Developer tools are extremely useful for effective API management and maintenance as they enable developers to define APIs and take necessary actions as and when required. These tools enable developers and QA engineers to test various APIs against a given set of parameters and performance metrics. At the same time, developer tools play a crucial role in deploying APIs into production after debugging them.
API Gateway
API management solutions are often called API gateways as they act as an intermediary between developers and application programming interfaces. Besides, they work like a doorkeeper for all the given APIs and are responsible for imposing the required API security policies and service requests. In this way, they are conducive to maintaining high-level API security as well as secure authentication and authorization.
Reporting and Analytics
As an organization, you must keep track of how your APIs are performing. Therefore, API management solutions must provide an intuitive dashboard interface to monitor API usage at any given time. Besides, it must provide statistical and analytical insights about the given APIs include the number of hits, the number of returned data objects, computation time, and the likes.
You may also like to read The Need For REST API Development and Management
Open Source API Management
Although there are several vendors offering customizable API management solutions, we also have many open-source alternatives available in the market. Such API development and API management solutions offer a no-cost approach to building custom APIs for diverse business use cases. With these open-source tools at your disposal, you only need to bear the development and maintenance costs without incurring any additional license fee. As a result, it significantly reduces the overall project costs while keeping overhead expenses to a bare minimum. Some popular open-source API development tools include DreamFactory, IBM Bluemix, and the Azure API management cloud.
Avail Our Custom API Development and Management Services
We, at Oodles ERP, provide end-to-end API development services to cater to the diverse business needs of our clients. Our development team adheres to the REST and SOAP architectures, as per the project needs, to build custom APIs for web/mobile applications, databases, and intranet systems. Our 360-degree API development services enable enterprises to solve complex business problems by facilitating seamless communication between different software components. We use open-source tools and technologies to build custom API management solutions that provide seamless navigation across varying software environments.
