APIs allow us to connect applications, devices and data. API management enables pieces of software to talk to one another, so you can flex, scale and transform your business.
What is API management?
API management can be distilled into four main capabilities:
- Creating and publishing APIs with supporting documentation
- Ensuring they’re consistently secure
- Monitoring performance and activity through analytics and logging
- Managing all your transformations and policies centrally
With an API management tool, you can operate securely, grow efficiently and scale smoothly.
Why is API management important?
API management allows organisations to manage API integrations across their systems and applications.
An API evolves in stages, forms multiple connections and requires maintenance over its entire lifecycle. The time spent building these integrations from scratch can be cumbersome and draining on internal resources. When you have dozens of APIs (or more), that resource drain intensifies, meaning you need the right tools to manage your APIs.
With API management, you can manage every API lifecycle stage quickly and easily. It can help you connect applications, securely expose business systems to external third-party consumers and enjoy detailed reporting of everything going on in real time, informing business decisions and determining the ROI of new projects.
Ultimately, API management will make your organisation’s life easier.
What are the benefits of API management?
Here are four of the top benefits of API management to you and your organisation:
1. Achieve data-driven growth
API management powers strategic decision-making. With access to all the data you need, you have the power to make the right business and investment choices.
2. Save money
You can develop services more rapidly and lower project costs with an API management platform. Moreover, using a software as a service (SaaS) API management solution, such as Tyk Cloud, gives you flexibility in terms of billing plans. Based on usage data, you can switch between different plans to scale up or down as necessary.
3. Secure your API portfolio
API developers are no longer solely responsible for baking security into their code. They can rely on an API management platform to provide robust, standardised security policies that meet the business’s needs.
4. Increase operational and engineering efficiency
API management platforms offer the intuitive tools you need to manage your APIs faster and more efficiently. Developers can design, implement and test their APIs in one place with ease.
What are the components of API management?
These four key components are the tools the API management system uses to optimise the performance of APIs:
API gateway
An API gateways handle all routing requests, API usage, composition and protocol translations between clients and the third-party services they’re connected to.
Developer portal
This self-service API portal makes it possible for developers to streamline communication between teams and easily browse, build and test their APIs.
Reporting and analytics
API management platforms can integrate analytics programs and use protocols designed to extract data for automated reporting and analysis, enabling the easy monitoring of rate limits and other metrics.
API lifecycle management
API management provides a sustainable solution for designing, testing, onboarding and managing APIs while ensuring adequate version control.
Got two more minutes? Then check out our video on what API management is.
API management: The key to unlocking your digital transformation
The right API management solution can unlock your digital transformation, reducing complexity and enabling you to move at speed, while delivering the proven outcomes you need. All while ensuring robust security between your clients and your back-end services and delivering superior digital experiences.
APIs are an integral part of modern digital transformations. That’s why transformation strategies need to embrace API management tools. An effective API management solution means you can knit together legacy systems, microservices, disparate data sources and more, all managed through one platform. It also means you can work with REST APIs, GraphQL, gRPC, legacy SOAP APIs… whatever you need.
Using API management tools in this way takes care of the ‘how’ part of your digital transformation, so you can focus on where you want to get to.
Maximizing the value of your APIs with effective management strategies
Effective API management can maximize the value of your APIs in multiple ways. It can improve your API security, deliver enhanced performance and underpin rapid scaling, meaning you can get greater value from every API.
Implementing reliable analytics and monitoring as part of your API management strategy also means you can understand how your APIs are being used, enabling you to respond to customer needs and identify and troubleshoot issues faster.
An API management platform with a decent developer portal and API documentation can add value to your APIs by making it easy for developers to find them, understand them and self-serve.
Effective API management can also support everything from enhanced governance and compliance to more agile innovation, meaning you keep everyone from your regulators to your teams happy – as well as your customers. All of which ensures optimal value from your APIs.
The role of API management in enabling data-driven decision making
An effective approach to API management means you can collect and analyze the usage statistics you need to make the right business decisions. You can:
- Use analytics tools and alerts to monitor your operations in real-time, using alerts to jump on any issues before your customers notice
- Understand and optimize API performance
- Analyze user demographics and customer behavior, then tailor your services and monetization strategy accordingly
- Streamline data access and sharing to ensure the right decision-makers can monitor the right metrics
- Grow your business based on a full understanding of your broader API ecosystem
API management use cases
Tyk’s customers have shown the vast range of use cases that API management platforms can serve. Some of the most common include using API management for authentication and authorization, digital transformation and API security.
Businesses also turn to platform providers for a central API management solution – one that covers managing internal APIs, external APIs or both. Rate limiting and quota management is another popular use case, with businesses around the world using this to optimize API performance and availability, defend against denial of service attacks and manage costs.
API management: Enabling secure and controlled access to your data
API management enables you to implement secure and controlled access to your data, whether you’re working with a single REST API or a complex architecture with hundreds of APIs in different formats. You can put robust authentication and authorization mechanisms in place, using security policies to achieve consistency and reliability across your access control.
Simplify your API management with Tyk’s comprehensive platform
Tyk’s comprehensive offering of an API gateway and API management platform provides all the security, access control, monitoring and other management capabilities you need, out of the box. Tyk makes it simple for you to manage all aspects of the API lifecycle through our easy-to-use management interface: Tyk Dashboard. Just because your business is complex, doesn’t mean your API management has to be.
Unleash the full potential of your APIs with Tyk’s management tools
Tyk’s API management tools provide all you need to unleash the full potential of your APIs. Use Tyk API Gateway, Tyk Dashboard, Tyk Developer Portal, Tyk Pump, Tyk Identity Broker and Tyk Multi Data Center Bridge to import, design, secure, monitor, monetize and more. You can innovate and get to market faster, be more responsive to your customers’ needs, create new products, keep your developers happy and meet your business goals. All through enabling your APIs to flourish with Tyk.
