I use API Gateway. Can I claim I have an API Strategy now?

In the last few years, I've had the opportunity to talk to a number of customers who, when asked what their API strategy is, simply answer something like "We're using a NGINX as API Gateway", or "we got https://www.mulesoft.comlicenses, still struggling to implement all we need".

Let's start like this: API Gateway is NOT an API Manager. It's… just a Gateway for your APIs. What does API Gateway do? API Gateway if your frontend. It manages the API requests.
It enforces  policies (AAA), and lets you manage your L7 Ingress… but there's so much more to a API Management to that.

How do you create your requirements?

When you design the API Management solution, you need to think about how to design a strategy for your particular business. To be specific, you need to focus on two things:

  • Your Developers
  • Your Customers

Why?
If you motivate your Developers to explore the ways to improve the APIs, and cross-reference this with Analytics capabilities, in order to achieve the continuous feedback of how your Customers are consuming, and how they'd like to consume your app. This means:

  • You want to give the best APIs to your developers, so that they can achieve the best value.
  • You need to establish the API Team, who would be in charge of all your APIs, making sure that Usability and Security are of the highest quality.


What do I need to build an API strategy?

You need to be sure you have all of the following aspects "covered":

  • Developer Portal: Where you can quickly engage your developers and partners.
  • Analytics: to gain the deep insight into API usage and performance.
  • Operations Automation: Scale APIs at web scale with operational control.
  • API Development: Tools that help develop, version, deploy and monitor APIs.
  • Security, covering all the aspects of your APIs.
  • Monetization enablement: Setting up pricing rules, based on usage, load and functionality, issuing invoices and collecting payments.


What are some API Management products that I should consider?

I personally prefer MuleSoft, probably due to the experiences in the past, but as it sometimes happens -  Gartner doesn't fully agree with me. Here's what they've determined for 2019. What do you think?




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