What is API Management? - A Beginner's Friendly Guide

API Management

API management is the process for distributing, controlling, and analyzing the APIs. API management is important so that organizations can respond to rapid changes in customer demands.

Managing APIs let users do the following:

• API Design - The ability to design, publish and deploy APIs.
• API Store - The ability to keep APIs at one place (in store).
• API Gateway - It is an API management tool that determines how clients interact with APIs through the use of policies.
• API Analytics - The ability to allow users to monitor metrics about APIs.
• Developer Portal - API management solution includes a developer portal as well which provides users with API documentation along with developer onboarding processes like signup and account administration.
• Support for API Monetization - The ability to allow users to define usage contracts based on metrics, like the number of API calls.
• Traffic Management - As API management is an additional layer in your layered architecture, it helps manage traffic as well.

The above features represent some of the major offerings that API management solutions provide.

API Management Successful Efforts

The following key performance indicators allow to measure the success of your API management efforts:

• Speed - Speed can be measured by latency. It can be influenced by techniques like throttling or caching.
• Quality - Quality is directly related to API’s behavior to developer’s expectation. It is a way of measuring developer’s satisfaction with the API.
• Availability of the API - Availability of the API to developers is termed as dependability. Downtime and Quota refers to API being available to use.
• Cost - The goal of measuring cost is to provide developers with the best value for your money.

API Management and Microservices

API management provides the necessary discovery mechanisms to ensure that available microservices can be found and documentation on how to use them is shared through the developer portal.

APIs are part of the microservice, managing the communications both internally within the application to other microservices and externally to other applications or users. Without an API, a microservice cannot connect to other services or users. An API provides the mechanism for deploying a microservice to end-users.

API Management and Microservices practice is uniquely positioned to help enterprises navigate the shifts in modern integration requirements.

API Management combined with Microservices, is helping users accelerate their digital transformation initiatives. API management provides the required security, access control, protection and service level management capabilities to microservices.

Benefits of API Management

API Management if done well can deliver the following benefits:

• Ensuring prosperous digital transformation of your business.
• Maintaining data integrity & security.
• Improving customer experiences and customer satisfaction.
• Helping businesses to define standardized policies that protect APIs.
• With the help of API analytics, ranking performance is made easy.
• API management enables programmers and organizations to use API to generate revenues.

RapidAPI - The API Management Tool

API Management tools help you to gain visibility into your API architecture. They enable administrators to monitor traffic, consistency, hitches, and security of their published APIs.

RapidAPI provides one of the best API Management tools that you need.

Sign Up to list, manage, and monetize your API on the world’s largest API hub here.

Wrap Up

Since, API management is the process of creating, publishing, and managing APIs in a secure and scalable environment, here at RapidAPI this is taken care of. Sign Up to learn more about it.