What is API Management?
API management refers to the processes for distributing, controlling, and analyzing the APIs that connect applications and data across the enterprise and across clouds. For enterprise companies using APIs across their organization, API management allows them to streamline the deployment of API integrations and simplify the process of documenting and sharing their configurations among development teams.
API management is a solution to large-scale API engineering problems, including API analytics, API security, API life cycle management and API gateways.
API Analytics
API Analytics are high-level monitoring and troubleshooting tools to monitor API traffic and usage. These are useful to API companies because they are providing a service to customers. They want to provide the best API service they can, and monetize it effectively. API analytics provide valuable data such as:
- Time
- Geography
- APIs
- API operations
- Products
- Subscriptions
- Users
- Requests
API management offers these analytics in their ecosystem, and allows enterprises to make better decisions with better data.
API Security
When an API endpoint offers its services to a user via HTTP, it is said to be "exposed". This means traffic can flow in or out of the API endpoints, including potentially malicious traffic. API security protects the user and the API developers with the exchange of authentication keys.
Authentication is made much easier and more secure for an enterprise with API management.
API Life Cycle Management
When a lot of customers depend on an API's endpoints and services, one change could break a lot of software across the web. Similarly, a company using internal APIs wants its internal processes running smoothly. API management gives developers the analytics and tools to properly version and deprecate APIs.
API Gateways
API management can act as a gateway to a suite of microservices. API management is a good solution to the technical requirements of cloud-native deployment, like security, service discovery, and analytics.
Conclusion
API management helps teams build, analyze, scale, and deploy their APIs. Not every API needs an API management suite, but it can be extremely helpful at scales like AWS customers, where control over the environment provides stability, scalability, and security.
