Businesses today are entering the generation of digital transformation. Social, mobile, analytics, cloud and IoT, or SMAC-IoT, are the five technology ideas that well understand today’s digital spectrum.
Looking closely at this spectrum, we will realize that there is a common thread that unites all these issues.
Can you guess that? We all know this thread as API – Application Programming Interface.
Web APIs are the defined interface or medium for enabling interactions between a business and its applications. This allows the company’s digital assets to be consumed on any channel and take full advantage of the global Digital Core.
What is API management?
The need of the hour is data security and refinement to fit the intended purpose.
Once this is accomplished, the next step is to figure out how to share the data or the APIs built on it. Making it available and accessible to other developers will be the main step forward in powering and accelerating digital transformation across the global business environment.
That’s where API management comes into play.
API Management allows you to discover, create, manage and socialize your APIs from local resources and share them internally or externally throughout the company.
The API management program can be created in-house or purchased from a third-party software development provider as a service.
Being more strategic, APIs enable much more than mobile. API Management describes the process for publishing, promoting, and policing APIs in a more secure and scalable environment. The purpose of API management is to monitor the interface lifecycle and ensure that the needs of API developers and applications are met.
What do API management tools have in store?
API management software tools come with the following functionality:
- Automate and monitor connections between APIs and the applications that use them.
- Control traffic from individual applications.
- Be sure to maintain consistency between API versions and their implementations.
- Improve application performance with memory management and caching mechanisms.
- API protection from any type of misuse, by providing shelter with security policies and procedures.
In the current era, APIs are envisioned as the foundation for various initiatives that drive digital transformation. APIs are now also frequently used to enable sales and marketing channels.
In the future, commercial companies from various vertical sectors are likely to participate in the growing API economy. This involvement may include them as API providers focused on driving innovation through partners and a third-party development environment. Therefore, it is essential that software development companies and companies from other industries partner together to develop an API strategy that clearly represents short- and long-term goals.
