Announcing the API Connect Test and Monitor Marketplace
At IBM API Connect we believe in a world that is controllable, scalable and simultaneously secure and open, where developers and businesses can build on one another’s creations to unlock their full potential, allowing their customers to be served everywhere on any cloud or in any environment.
We build the best API security and lifecycle management software on the market.¹ It helps developers and businesses secure, manage and share their APIs, to scale their businesses and meet the needs of their customers everywhere. Indeed, these days developers and enterprises face significant challenges in their API management efforts, and these are compounded when they seek to test and monitor those APIs. As such, we also develop API Connect Test and Monitor, an automated, collaborative and powerful API testing tool, to assist with the many APIs they create.
“According to a One Poll study, businesses on average manage 363 different APIs, and two-thirds (69 percent) of those organizations are exposing their APIs to the public and their partners. …”
-Torsten George writing in Security Week
With the speed and complexity of modern business, protocols, standards and languages, there’s multiple risks to not keeping up. If a provider does not offer APIs that meet the security requirements of their consumers or own organization, they may end up harming their customers and end users. Examples abound from Panera to Facebook even Google can slip up in these ways. This emphasizes the importance of an API Platform that can help secure, manage and share APIs in a secure and scalable way.
As if the security challenges weren’t enough, the ability to provide information to API consumers in an understandable format is also essential. Specifications such as Open API, RAML or API Blueprint help to improve this through their guidance and standardization. However, Though Open API Specification seems to have won out as the premier specification format over RAML or API Blueprint, there are still subtleties that many API Providers need to be aware of.
With industry-specific coordination and work to converge on standards, it can be very confusing to align on which of these formats are important to invest in. For example, when the European Parliament adopted a revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2)they underlined the need for banking enterprises to offer APIs in a standard method to allow developers to deliver new experiences to their customers in a secure and scalable way. Likewise, efforts in the telecommunications and healthcare industries are driving further openness without sacrificing security.
To help get our customers started we’ve provided the API Connect Test and Monitor Marketplace a reference of some key API Standards. We picked some of the API standards around which we’ve seen customers of ours begin to align. We’ve provided example pre-formatted tests for APIs of these standard formats in a way that our customers can easily grab and get started. Additionally, these can be customized and set up as a recurring monitoring call within API Connect Test and Monitor. We started with two important industry standards:
Banking and Financial:
Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN) is an organization set up to establish and promote a common architectural framework for enabling banking interoperability.
Communication:
TM Forum is a non-profit industry association for service providers and their suppliers in the telecommunications industry. Members include communications and digital service providers, telephone companies, cable operators, network operators, software suppliers, equipment suppliers, systems integrators and management consultancies. Amongst other tools, they provide REST based Open APIs to help its members in their digital transformation initiatives.
We look forward to helping you meet your goals as you move toward a more secure and open, controllable and scalable world where your customers can build on your successes. As a start on that we’ve not only provided the market-leading platform to secure, manage and share your APIs, but a great way to Test and Monitor them too! We’ve further helped to reduce some of the confusion and uncertainty by providing some reference tests for API Standards that have gained momentum. As technology continues to evolve our team will continue to look for new industry standards that could be helpful to our customers and offer them as well.
Check it out and let us know what you think!
(1) By “ Best” I mean
A.) — the largest market share and thus greatest trust (IDC Market Share Report: We are #1, double of our closest competitor. https://developer.ibm.com/apiconnect/2018/08/08/ibms-api-management-undisputed-1-market-share/)
B.) The best rated by industry Analyst Forrester, https://developer.ibm.com/apiconnect/2018/10/29/analyst-firm-lists-ibm-api-connect-as-an-api-management-leader/
and
C.) the most delightful user-experience given our Award for Design. (iF design award — https://developer.ibm.com/apiconnect/2019/03/05/ibm-api-connect-wins-2019-if-design-award/)
