API Management allows ISVs to accelerate their growth through the cloud-based API Portal. By utilising this service for API management, developer time can be reduced and refocused. We spoke to Curnan Reidy, Software Development Team Lead at Spanish Point Technologies about this service and its benefits.
API Management, powered by Azure, allows ISVs to manage the categorisation, build and security of their APIs through a centralised service. ISVs accelerate growth while maintaining a unified management experience. APIs are managed more effectively through the API Portal.
Developers build applications faster through an API-first approach. To learn more about API Management, the API Portal and how this approach drives innovation for ISVs we spoke with Head of Development, Curnan Reidy.
As team leader for software development teams and a principal developer himself, Curnan has vast experience with cloud application development and APIs. In this article Curnan discusses the API portal and how Azure API Management can drive application transformation.
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An API portal is a place where developers can go to access a company’s APIs – similar to how the App Store was created as a place where iPhone users could download and use apps. Azure API Management is Azure’s implementation of an API Portal and it provides a way to create consistent and modern API gateways for existing back-end services.
How does an API Portal help in developing, managing and distributing APIs to customers and partners?
An API portal turns your APIs into products that developers can easily discover, access, and integrate into their applications. You can use an API portal to package and promote APIs as products, making the process of onboarding, engaging, and empowering developers much more streamlined. An API portal is like a brochure where you can advertise or host your API products. An API portal is not just one-way communication – in addition to hosting documentation about the API, it has other functionalities such as FAQs and articles, enabling consumers and producers to make suggestions, ask questions, and talk about their experiences.
What are the advantages of API Portal?
An API portal has all the information that a developer could want about an API including documentation, specification, security, pricing, any legal notices, and complete transparency about the design of the API. Further information about the business benefits of implementing the API and some examples of successful uses of the API can be included. In fact, these are encouraged to increase the likelihood a developer will use that API.
What are the main differences between an API and a web service?
There are various ways that an API differs from web services:
How does Azure API Management drive innovation?
Developers should be focusing on developing applications, not provisioning and managing infrastructure. API management provides a serverless API gateway that delivers a centralised, fully managed entry point for backend services. It enables developers to publish, manage, secure, and analyse APIs at scale.
You can take existing web service applications and modernise them by using API Management policies to implement caching or ensure security requirements.
Our customers are innovating at a faster pace by using cloud-native architectures to build applications designed for the cloud, thereby providing new capabilities for their businesses and improving the experience for their customers. The architecture of these applications is based on containerization and loosely coupled microservices, API Management enabling the easy connection between these distributed microservices.
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Utilising Azure API Management and the API Portal to accelerate growth
There are various benefits of API Management that boost the growth of an ISV. From the ease of API categorisation for developers to the management capabilities at scale e.g. security management. The API portal also supports developers by consolidating all the accompanying resources and documentation. This allows developers to focus on what is important, innovation. Interested in how the API Management and API Portal can help grow your applications? Talk to Spanish Point today to set up a consultation.
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