Next Gen Information Integration with API Managers

APIs have become crucial for modern organisations because of the unparalleled capabilities they provide in terms of integrating a wide range of products or services to serve customers better and be on top of the competition. According to an article in businesswire, 97% of Enterprise Leaders agree that APIs are essential for survival but most of them face challenges pertaining to the roll-out of a comprehensive API Strategy.

Let’s consider a Telco Operator for context, operators rely on a multitude of systems to manage entitlements, customer service, recharges, billing, and more. These systems often operate with distinct systems and are interconnected through API integrations. However, without proper management, aggregation, and governance of these API integrations, the potential for complexity in customer experience significantly increases in the event of a failure in any one integration. This underscores the critical necessity for a robust platform that facilitates the seamless management, control and troubleshooting of API integrations. Such a platform not only ensures operational stability but also enables organisations to capitalise on emerging opportunities within the API ecosystem.

In this article, we discuss what an API Manager is, what benefits it brings and introduce you the Axonect API Manager, which is a next generation API Management suite for businesses.

What is API management?

By definition, API management is the process where organisations build, publish, govern, and monitor APIs within their systems. It is typically achieved through a platform which has a set of tools and services to support secure API provisioning and management. API Management also ensures that all the intended APIs are exposed only to authorised applications or services and are functioning properly without any mishap.

What Are the Features of an API Manager?

1. API Publishing
   API Managers can help organisations create a developer portal where newly published APIs can be showcased along with their documentation. Developers will access this store and identify their required APIs and utilise them possibly paying the organisation the charges for services.
2. Governance and Security
   Security is a pillar of any integration. API Managers ensure this by limiting access to applications or users with the correct API keys or other authentication credentials ensuring only those with proper permissions can leverage its services. They also comply with any corporate policies and external regulations around data privacy.
3. API Templates
   API managers also provide organisations the capability to design API Templates and make them readily available so that developers can use them with ease with less development efforts. This eliminates redundant work and accelerates the deployment process of the APIs.
4. API Documentation
   An API Manager typically has the feature to store the documentation in a document portal where developers inside and outside the organisation can access it. This centralised repository allows users to quickly learn about the process of implementing the proper methods to call the API and know what response to expect.
5. Analytics and Reporting
   API Managers typically include API metrics, traces and audit information. Additionally, they also log the requests and responses of the APIs. Then they convert these data into useful insights. Using these insights, organisations can track the frequency of requests and identify popular services to improve and plan their future API developments.
6. API Monetisation
   Organisations which have APIs which are in high demand by other organisations can provision those APIs with specialised subscription plans. This allows them to create different usage-based subscription plans with different tiers allowing the monetisation of the APIs. This helps both parties as the vendor gets their ROI faster and the consumer has the API readily available without much in house development efforts.

Like we have already discussed, APIs have a significant role in today’s world. Though a lot of organisations use APIs for various purposes, most of them lack a streamlined API Management platform which makes it harder for them to deploy and manage API integrations efficiently. Understanding this challenge, Axiata Digital Labs has developed a sophisticated API Management platform which can also extend as an API Aggregator and an API Monetiser.

The first flavour of the Axonect API Manager Suite is the API Manager. It provides an internal API catalogue which can be used by developers to efficiently discover and leverage existing APIs. It also facilitates the creation of bespoke APIs or new APIs from scratch with Open API specifications, streamlining the process of building new services. The developers can also expose REST API services created using SOAP endpoints. This versatility ensures that developers have the flexibility and tools they need to craft APIs that meet the specific needs of their projects.

Axonect’s second offering within its APIM portfolio is the API Monetiser which empowers companies to independently onboard service providers, effectively capitalising on their existing assets, and seamlessly managing their API ecosystem. This eliminates the need for organisations to invest in costly and challenging-to-maintain API monetisation platforms which can translate to a more cost-effective and streamlined approach, enabling companies to harness the revenue potential of their APIs while maintaining control and agility in a competitive digital landscape.

The third offering in Axonect’s APIM suite is the highly sophisticated API Aggregator which facilitates multi-operator aggregation, seamlessly integrating the functions of discovery, routing, and inter-connectivity of APIs for a comprehensive array of enterprise-grade solutions. It brings together services made accessible by other hubs, gateways, and through direct connections from operators which culminates in a singular integration point for enterprises and service providers, granting them swift, uncomplicated access to a diverse spectrum of APIs from an extensive network of providers.

Benefits Axonect APIM Brings

• Lower operating expenses - Axonect APIM can significantly reduce the hardware overhead by different means optimising the operating costs. If it is deployed as a SaaS solution, it can automatically scale up or down the instances optimising hardware for spikes.
• Optimised Performance - Axonect APIM comes with a well optimized processing core to boost the performance. It can provide an excellent core to TPS (Transactions Per Second) ratio maximizing the available processing power. It also has a global and distributed throttling mechanism for limiting slippage rates to the minimums.
• Enhanced Operations and development - Axonect APIM Platform provide a birds-eye view of the system for streamlining the operations. It also provides enhanced CI/CD support and flexible deployment options for better development and deployment.
• High-availability - APIM architecture is crafted with loosely coupled components which results in mutually exclusive life cycles (e.g.: data plane). This improves the high availability of the platform.
• Better Observability - The APIM Platform has three pillars (logging, tracing, metrics) for observability which are fully supported via industry-standard tools. To enhance it further, it supports proactive issue resolution and self-healing features.

Interested to know more about Axonect API Manager Suite? visit www.axonect.com now. You can also visit www.axiatadigitallabs.com to know more about ADL.

Contributors

Mohamed Afzal (Senior Technical Writer)
Sewvandi Wickramasinghe (Technical Writer)