We have seen that in large organizations business groups focus in each of their functional areas for delivering the best for their consumers. Applications are created for that along with back end services require this is hence are also boxed in by organization structures and functional areas. A simple example is shown below where the Products are being managed independently by each department.

API Management

The problem with this is duplicate and redundant data, management overhead, maintenance cost and so on. Instead of isolation and repetition the organization can go for a centralized structure for commonly used data as shown below.

centralized structure

Here for example, Products is maintained centrally and APIs are created to access it, not only from internally within the organization but even by partners for extensions.

But again with this structure as API creation continues, it becomes very difficult to manage the explosion of APIs. Also discoverability of existing APIs becomes a big issue due to poor documentation, control, education to new developers. Hence management of APIs becomes crucial.

A complete API strategy should address both API creation and consumption. There are many market players that provide API management as a service. API management software can be built in-house or purchased as a service using a third-party provider like Windows Azure API Management Service, Oracle API Management Service, IBM API Management service and so on. API management software tools need to address the needs of multiple stakeholders like Developers, API Managers, API Performance and monitoring administrators and Infrastructure managers.

Some of examples of publicly available APIs are:

Some of the types of APIs in financial services could be:

For the Healthcare sector some examples are:

For Energy and Utilities some examples are:

For eCommerce some examples are:

An API Management service should provide at least the following:

With the explosion of apps in the cloud, exposing or creating an API can become a new revenue model for a company.