Vendors began providing gateways to help these organizations register their APIs, harness their internal data, and offer some external services via APIs. During this period, many organizations realized they could extend their value propositions through APIs, much like Salesforce, Google, and Facebook had done. What is API management, and how can an API platform help?ĪPI management, which is the process of designing, deploying, and monitoring APIs, became a mainstream discipline in the last decade, right before the popularization of the cloud. These features make an API platform a core piece of any organization's operational landscape-regardless of whether they purchase it or build it themselves.

They also offer governance capabilities that promote API consistency and security, which enables organizations to maximize the value of their API portfolio while minimizing risk. They include tools and integrations that support efficient, collaborative processes throughout the entire API lifecycle while bringing the most critical constituents-the API consumers-into the conversation. But this new landscape necessitates a new approach to managing, developing, deploying, and consuming APIs-one that works for every type of API and gives teams the flexibility to use the tools that make the most sense for them.ĪPI platforms enable teams to succeed in an API-first world by harnessing the full potential of APIs-whether they are private, partner, or public. This approach, which is known as API-first, allows teams to leverage private, partner, and public APIs to bridge the gaps between small, discrete chunks of code in order to create applications that are powerful, resilient, and able to meet user needs. They are also using open source libraries and frameworks to implement a wide range of functionalities-and leveraging automation to accelerate their development and deployment cycles.ĪPIs have played an enormous role in this shift, with an increasing number of teams conceptualizing and building applications as an interconnection of internal and external services that are delivered through APIs.

More and more teams are building their applications as a collection of microservices that can be managed and deployed independently of one another, and they are hosting those applications on cloud infrastructure that scales automatically.

These demands have ushered in a new era of software development. They expect their data to be consistently available on any device, and they may abandon an application if it doesn't offer a delightful user experience that keeps pace with its competitors. Modern software users have extremely high standards. What role do API platforms play in an API-first world?

Postman online api test