Technology can move at lightning speed, particularly with AI and automation now firmly in the mix. So, how can you ensure your API landscape is well suited to your enterprise’s future needs, as well as its current ones? Actually, there are several ways you can achieve this. Read on to discover them.
The evolution of the API ecosystem
A couple of recent projections from Gartner provide context for just how fast the API landscape is changing. First, Gartner believes that 50% of API usage will not involve a developer by 2028. Second, the firm projects that 50% of API monetization will be supported by machine/nonhuman customers by 2029.
Between machine-to-machine communication, the AI-driven creation of services and automated provisioning and access, the sheer scale of the automation wave that’s hurtling towards the sector is incredible. Some enterprises will be ready for it; others will be washed away while their competitors benefit. Those that are ready will be the ones that start preparing now for this future landscape, building flexibility and agility into their infrastructures, ready to get the best from their APIs today and well into the future.
Let’s look at how your business can achieve this.
How to futureproof your enterprise API landscape
A range of factors can contribute to how well your enterprise is positioned to not only face the future, but harness shifts in technology to maximum advantage.
Observability
One crucial factor is the need for full visibility and full control across your API landscape. If you don’t already have this, it’s time to demand it!
There’s a reason that everyone is talking about observability. In an API ecosystem, the more you can see and understand, the faster and more insightful your business decisions can be. You can achieve faster value delivery and enhanced quality, beating your competitors to market while also delivering consistently exceptional user experiences.
Full visibility into your API infrastructure also means a more proactive and rapid approach to issue resolution, a greater understanding of API dependencies and insights into opportunities for future and/or greater monetization.
Composability
Just as microservices enable you to build something greater than the sum of its parts, a composable API management platform means you keep building and innovating at scale and at pace. You can add components as technology advances and markets change, bringing in new tooling and features with far more ease due to the composable nature of your solution.
This approach to API management provides crucial flexibility and agility in responding to new and emerging technology, delivering a solid foundation to futureproof your enterprise API landscape.
Open standards
Here at Tyk, we firmly believe that open standards are the future. They provide flexibility for a huge range of integrations, including with future tools and products, providing enterprises with plenty of flexibility in how they grow their infrastructures. Widely adopted open standards also deliver a superb degree of stability combined with their future-fit-by-default approach.
The open source development of open standards is another point in their favour, with experts from around the world contributing their knowledge and experience.
All of this combines to make a compelling case for open standards if you want your business to be ready to move and adapt fast over the years ahead.
Consistency
Choosing a unified platform for your API landscape is another crucial part of futureproofing your enterprise. Doing so means you can implement the same standards of governance, security and visibility across your entire API ecosystem. It’s efficient, cost-effective and supports a seamless compliance journey for regulated businesses.
Such consistency can be applied across your existing systems and allow for future needs. Tyk is a strong example of this. You can use it to implement the same secure, robust governance, security and observability across legacy systems, RESTful architectures and GraphQL ecosystems. At the same time, continual innovation means you can bring these same API management practices to your evolving services, such as applying them to event-driven architectures via Tyk Streams.
Avoid vendor lock-in
If you want to be free to embrace new tooling and innovate fast, reducing your technical debt and avoiding vendor lock-in should be top priorities. Solutions that tie you to one provider mean you can only ever innovate at the pace the provider dictates – unless you try to build bespoke workarounds that drain development time and increase cost and complexity. Usually, while making observability harder, too.
Choosing to manage your APIs in a way that avoids this serves you well, both now and in the future. It provides the freedom to choose the best new tools and services to achieve what you need, regardless of which provider created them. If you’ve laid the foundations for superior connectivity by embracing open standards, too, as mentioned above, then you’ve widened the pool of available tooling even further.
Using Tyk to make your enterprise API landscape futureproof
Tyk’s full lifecycle API management platform addresses both your legacy and new AI technical and business challenges. It means you can drive digital transformation even as you help your teams streamline existing operations. Composable, flexible and hugely customizable, Tyk delivers the governance, security and observability that an automated, AI-enabled future demands.
If you’re ready to drive value and implement a migration-proof, futureproof solution for your API landscape, you can trial Tyk’s full features for free or arrange a guided evaluation.
