Powering Innovation Through API Management

API is an acronym for Application Program Interface. In simple terms, API is a software intermediary that allows applications to interact with each other and securely exchange data. APIs act as a messenger between applications that take requests, translate and return responses.

API management is the process of creating, publishing, controlling, and analyzing APIs in a secure and scalable environment. API management provides a unified platform to scale, share and socialize APIs while ensuring security and access control. In addition, API Management provides usage analytics for reporting and assessment to improve performance and decision-making.

The API management platform is a software tool used to create, access, publish and govern APIs. With API management platforms, companies can centrally manage, run and secure APIs, and perform full lifecycle management.

The key components of an API management platform are:

API Design:

API design enables the creation, publishing and deployment of APIs. API design defines the architectural and functional characteristics of APIs and influences how the users consume these APIs and how they are tracked. 

API Gateway: 

An API Gateway is a software component sitting between a client and a collection of backend services transmitting requests and responses. The API Gateway acts as a manager handling the requests, routing, translation, and delivery of data and services. The API Gateway enables developers to quickly access and manage microservices as APIs. The API gateway also acts as a  gatekeeper enforcing security policies and authorization.  

API Developer Portal:

API Developer Portal is a place where published APIs are cataloged. The developer portal serves as a marketplace for the published APIs from where users can browse, subscribe, and read about them.  The API Developer Portal is also helpful to build communities to engage developers and consumers.

API Security:

Security is an essential component of APIM.  You can use an API management platform to secure and govern your APIs various authentication types including Basic and OAuth 2.0.  It also allows users to implement security capabilities such as user-level rate limiting and IP-white listing to ensure that your APIs are safeguarded and used the way you intended them to be used.

API Analytics:

API analytics are critical to track key performance and monitor metrics. API Analytics enable organizations to filter, sort, and aggregate API data and display it in reports and dashboards that are easy to understand. With API analytics, organizations can monitor API performance and usage trends and also track metrics of response times, engagement, retention, and developer conversions. Along with these metrics, API analytics allows to track and analyse bugs reported for an API over time.

API management delivers many business benefits and plays a critical role in propelling organizations in their digital transformation.  Here are some of the key benefits:

Customer Experience

As customer expectations keep growing, companies need to solve these challenges and stay competitive by adopting and making use of old and new applications. API management plays a vital role in improving customer experiences by enabling companies to interact with their customers across different channels, platforms, and devices by creating a seamless and consistent delivery of solutions and services. For example, Amazon personalizes and serves the product suggestions and promotions in line with what a consumer has been looking for and helps in making the shopping experience better. APIs bring together applications and provide a connected experience to customers. APIs also enable them to be real-time so that companies can understand where any customer interaction is from items such as order status to support tickets to purchase behavior. APIs help drive customer satisfaction by providing personalized and value-added services.

Security

APIs are made accessible to both internal and external stakeholders like the employees, partners, and customers. When different parties access data, security does become a concern. API management ensures data security and privacy by controlling access through authorization and authentication. API security is strengthened with the use of tokens, encryption, and signatures making sure that the right users are allowed to modify data. Through API management, security oversight is increased by closely monitoring API activity, identifying potential threats, and taking immediate actions.

Agility

The growing number of applications leads to an increase in API integrations connecting them. It is a resource-intensive exercise for the companies to build new integrations and manage the existing ones. API management helps companies to be flexible by offering the capability to reuse integrations and quickly deploy them. APIs also allow you to expose legacy systems so they are easier to use and edit. API management provides a unified and centralized platform to easily create, share, and manage APIs, enabling companies to scale rapidly while saving time and costs.

Decision Making

API management provides detailed analytics capabilities helping to analyze API usage patterns, gauge trends, and track key performance indicators. Companies leverage data insights as strategic inputs for improved decision-making.

APIs are increasingly becoming important as organizations rely on them for everything, from introducing new products and channels to achieving operational efficiency and delivering an improved customer experience. Organizations need to implement effective API management and create an environment to manage the API lifecycle, making APIs secure and easily consumable. 

Jitterbit understands the importance of APIM management and the growing dependencies of businesses on APIs. With the Jitterbit API integration platform, businesses can create, run, secure, publish, manage and analyze APIs and microservices no matter where your APIs are hosted, or what technologies they run on. A simple yet powerful user interface makes it very easy to integrate APIs from existing systems. Users can create new APIs rapidly, compose new applications, and delight internal users, partners, and customers. Because our API and integration products run on a single platform, your APIs can access any application or data source anywhere, any time.