You can use centralised API management to maximise the performance of your API ecosystem and enhance visibility, control and security.
What is a centralised API?
Centralised APIs are managed centrally through a platform, with security, governance and other management elements undertaken at the platform level.
You can take a centralised integration approach for any type of API: REST, SOAP, gRPC, GraphQL and so on. Just ensure the platform you choose works with the types of APIs you have, along with other elements of your architecture.
With a centralised architecture, you manage everything through a single central platform. This enables you to streamline API design, deployment, security, governance and monitoring across the organisation.
Benefits of centralised APIs
A centralised API structure provides outstanding visibility into the entire API programme through monitoring and analytics, driving better business decision-making.
Organisations implementing management through a centralised platform can reap the benefits of consistent security, design, versioning, documentation, testing and more. Other benefits include greater reusability, improved collaboration, easier API discovery, faster time to market and expanded monetisation opportunities.
Centralised API management can also make it easier to meet regulatory requirements.
Do you need a centralised or decentralised architecture?
Opting for a decentralised architecture gives individual teams greater autonomy to manage their own APIs. This can enable better design and deployment flexibility for each team. It also avoids having a single point of failure.
However, the lack of standardisation and difficulty in scaling and monitoring decentralised architectures means that many larger businesses find a centralised platform to be a more efficient approach.
How to design a centralised API architecture
A centralised API architecture means you can establish API design standards and best practices that apply to all APIs. This means you can bring consistency to naming conventions, data formats, versioning and more. Factor in:
- API design principles. Good design starts with good API modelling and clarity over what your API needs to achieve and why. That means understanding specific needs, use cases and business and resource requirements. This is true in individual API design and your centralised architecture.
- API versioning strategies. A solid versioning strategy is essential for managing a single API product or multiple APIs. Ensure your internal development processes are aligned with a strategic approach that considers customer needs and pain points. Centralising your approach to versioning and applying consistency can help smooth the process significantly.
- API testing. Centralised API architectures can bring consistency to your testing processes, providing a unified testing interface and integrated testing tools for greater efficiency. Including monitoring and debugging tools in centralised systems, along with automation, can make it easier to identify and troubleshoot problems.
How to implement and manage a centralised API architecture
First, define your goals – what you need to achieve and why. Then choose an API management platform that suits your needs. Different platforms have different offerings in terms of scalability, security, developer portal usability, support for standards like OpenAPI and commitment to providing a fully open source API gateway.
The following considerations need careful thought:
- API security: you can implement robust, standardised security at the platform level while enabling each API to be developed independently. This gives developers headroom to innovate alongside consistent security and governance.
- API performance optimisation: centralise your approach to load balancing, caching, content compression, traffic shaping and rate limiting while optimising routing, using connection pooling, offloading authentication and authorisation from backend services and more.
- API monitoring and analytics: oversight of everything, from API usage to performance, puts you in a powerful position to make decisions on everything from monetisation to performance improvements. Leading API management platforms will deliver easy integration with API monitoring and analytics tools for full insight.
- API troubleshooting and maintenance: act fast to troubleshoot and solve issues efficiently. Monitoring and alerts can help you identify bottlenecks and investigate any anomalies.
- API documentation: a centralised platform typically includes a repository for API documentation, making it more accessible, consistent and up-to-date. It makes documentation version control easier and, with the proper search and navigation functionality, can make it faster for developers to find the information they need.
Finally, remember that costs can differ massively, so be sure to find an API management platform that suits your budget, both now and as you scale.
Hungry for more? Then check out our helpful posts on API strategy.
