What Is API Management?

API management is essential for driving digital transformation. If your business has any involvement in creating or consuming APIs, you are going to need API management to drive business value.

What Is API Management?

API management is the process of managing APIs that connect products and services. It includes designing, implementing, securing, managing, monitoring, and publishing APIs.

By using API management best practices, you can enable a composable enterprise framework and expose packaged business capabilities. Additionally, you can secure and improve complex microservices implementations at scale.

What Are API Management Tools?

An API management platform is a tool used to create, control, publish, secure, and analyze APIs. This is especially critical in an enterprise setting. With API management tools, you get control over APIs. By using an API management platform, you can truly experience a secure digital transformation and drive your business forward. 

There are several critical components in any API management platform:

API Design

API design enables the user to create APIs, as well as publish and deploy them. 

API Gateway

API gateways make it easy to manage, deploy, develop, and operate APIs. An API gateway enables enterprises to standardize API delivery with high security, performance, and availability.

Developer Portal

The developer portal is also called an API portal, API marketplace, and API catalog. The portal enables organizations to market and publish their APIs to connect with other developers and consumers. Through this portal, a partner ecosystem can grow to provide new channels for your business.

API Lifecycle Management

API lifecycle management refers to maintaining stability and reliability through all stages and environments of the development and deployment process. Proper lifecycle management ensures that APIs — and the process — remain secure. 

API Analytics

Operational and business analytics provide meaningful insights into your APIs. Know how they are performing, how they are being used, and how they are delivering value to your business.

Enterprise API Management, Defined

APIs are fundamental to extending business logic into new arenas and quickly capitalizing on digital opportunities. But it's more than just creating APIs. It's about creating a strategy to address stakeholder concerns. It's about exposing key digital services via APIs, consuming external APIs that increase competitiveness, and utilizing internal APIs to drive operational efficiency. 

Learn how to do it in our white paper: Enterprise API Management, Defined.

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How Do You Manage APIs?

The best way to manage APIs is to use an API platform you can trust. 

Akana, for instance, delivers the critical components you need to successfully manage APIs:

• Easy for users to create and publish APIs.
• Strongest API gateway in the market.
• Out-of-the-box fully integrated developer portal and marketplace.
• Full lifecycle API management capabilities.
• Automated API analytics. 

Top 4 API Management Benefits

The top three API management benefits are as follows. 

Accelerate Digital Transformation

API management accelerates digital transformation. It create new routes to market, creates value for customers and partners, increases time to market, and ignites your digital transformation.

Protect Your Data's Integrity

It only takes one breach for your business to experience fines, litigation, and irreparable damage to the brand. That's why you need to be able to configure and enforce API security standards quickly and easily. This includes standards for authentication, authorization, data privacy, attack prevention, and non-repudiation.

Create Better Customer Experiences

Leveraging API management helps you create better customer experiences. That's because leveraging API management helps you get the most out of your technological investment. You can leverage your applications to innovate and access a wider audience.

Simplify and Secure Microservices Architectures

API management is the leading methodology for grappling with microservices architectures at scale. When organizations unlock microservices, they also unleash digital complexity and hundreds of application endpoints. API management platforms can help secure these endpoints fast allowing your business to innovate faster. 

Key Akana API Management Features

Akana delivers the best API management features on the market.

The following are some of the API management features that set Akana apart.

Multicloud and Hybrid Cloud Deployments

Akana is available in cloud (SaaS), on-premises, and hybrid environments. You can even deploy Akana across multicloud environments. Akana prevents you from getting stuck on a platform that doesn’t support changes in your needs.

Simple Design

Akana makes it easy for you to design APIs from scratch. Import and export can be done in the API descriptor language of your choice. Your developers can publish APIs in their preferred language — and the community to consume APIs in their preferred language.

Insightful Analytics

Measure the impact of your APIs with the powerful Akana analytics engine. Ensure operational efficiency with operational analytics. Gain insight into usage with developer analytics. Monetize your APIs for maximize revenue with business analytics.

Promotion Platform

Akana’s turnkey developer portal makes it easy to connect with different audiences, both internal and external. This drives more usage and opportunities to unlock new business channels.

Traffic Management

Akana helps you improve customer satisfaction through its traffic management capabilities. You can easily control the how much traffic flows through your APIs with routing, throttling, and service-level agreement (SLA) capabilities.

What Does API Management Success Look Like?

API management success looks like:

• Reduced risk of SLA penalties, data breaches, or regulatory compliance violation.
• Higher productivity for end users.
• Lower costs of infrastructure, publishing and document APIs, integration, compliance, and more.
• Accelerated revenue as a result of time-to-market and innovation.
• Increased operational efficiency for digital services and business processes. 

API management should deliver ROI and value to your business fast.

With Akana, API management does just that. 

Find out how much more value you can deliver to your business by using Akana. Use our assessment tool to understand the business value of API management.

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Explore additional resources to master API management and more:

• API Basics
• API Lifecycle
• API ROI