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When we are talking about APIs in a modern world, it’s all about making money. While
traditional IT used to focus on cost-savings and efficiency, that is not the right focus
for API initiatives. Here it is all about revenue, new offerings and time to market.
Think of who are the drivers for such change. Take the systems of records where traditional
IT has been dealing with those very technical interfaces almost like forever now. Then imagine
a mobile developer comes in - a person who knows how to write mobile apps for iOS, Android
and so on, but do not have a clue how to access those traditional interfaces. Mobile topic
started a little earlier than IoT and others, while the question remains the same - how
to make those more productive? This is where APIs are coming in to encapsulate technical
hard to use interfaces and make them easy to consume.
We usually are talking about 3 types of audience. Most companies start with their internal consumers
- developers who are writing apps or working with the data. Partners go next with APIs,
as a new way of working with external companies. Finally public consumers, when APIs are available
externally for all kind of needs.
Together with the growth of users and the overall number of APIs, there is a stronger
need in a management strategy for their whole lifecycle. Everything starts with plan and
design steps when enterprises are thinking about goals, resources, dependencies and doing
the first high-level modeling steps. Next step is development itself when engineers
are working on integration, data transformation, orchestration and so on. Afterward goes testing
phase. Once API is tested, you can proceed to deployment. Final lifecycle step is to
retire, when you can shut down the API or start the cycle once again with planning for
a new version.
While this level is sufficient for small, medium business and limited set of APIs, enterprise-level
companies are often have a management lifecycle. You can think of it as a second gear wheel.
Your API lifecycle tightens to it's create phase, but as we are talking about running
APIs at scale, security and management steps are extremely important. Next move will be
to focus on the socializing aspect, which is a way to reach your developer audience
with self-service capabilities to subscribe and learn how to use these APIs. Once you
did that, logical next steps will be to monetize your work by introducing usage and subscription
plans. Finally, you would want to monitor and analyze how your APIs are working to have
better insights into the next cycle.
As a great example of API Management solution you can take a look on IBM API Connect, which
will cover for you both gear wheels through API creation, management, socialize, monetize
and analyze steps together with IBM API Connect Test & Monitor offering that will focus on
testing and API monitoring and IBM DataPower Gateway for enterprise-level security and
scalability.
Such API management offering can help businesses to accelerate their API initiatives and overall
digital transformation journey across on-premise, public cloud or private cloud.
At this point, we will be closing our microlearning session. If you are seeking more information
about API Management or IBM API Connect offerings follow the links in the description. Please
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