APIs enable businesses to collect

[rakhirhif8963]

How to Manage API Complexity with Observability, Governance, and Compliance
28.02.2023
Application programming interfaces (APIs) are complex. Improving observability, governance, and compliance are key to healthy API integration and business prosperity, writes Rakshit Rao, co-founder and CEO of APIwiz, an API lifecycle management tool, on Techopedia.

APIs are quietly working in the background of our lives. Suffice it to say that the multi-billion dollar API market is made up of thousands of APIs operating across the internet, from shipping logistics to payments.

Rapid's 2022 State of APIs study found that 62.6% of developers relied on APIs more last year than the previous year, and that APIs will continue to help drive new technologies across industries as they enable innovative customer experiences.

valuable data, allowing companies to understand how consumers interact with their brands and develop effective strategies to gain a competitive advantage. APIs are also vital for businesses as they facilitate digital transformation and application modernization.

However, as companies strive to provide a better experience for end users by releasing new features and updates, the API architecture becomes more complex and distributed. And in this environment, organizations must ensure that their API-based applications run smoothly. Here are the key elements that every business using APIs should focus on.

Observability to overcome API proliferation
“You can’t manage what you can’t see” is the cardinal finland mobile database of the API world, and explains why documenting and cataloging APIs is the first step to making sure your APIs work smoothly.

APIs have been built over the years by different teams using different technologies, and some are being rebuilt as new microservices. It has gotten to the point where organizations can't tell exactly how many services, versions, deployment locations, and API endpoints they have.

And this isn’t just a feature of large organizations; even smaller companies and startups end up creating APIs for every project in their quest to meet rising customer expectations and reduce time to market. This leads to API proliferation.

For example, a digital bank might start out with 30 APIs. As the business scales, the number of APIs can continue to grow. If the bank doesn’t document them, managing hundreds of APIs and their different versions becomes extremely difficult. Teams might have good visibility into each API, but at the organization-wide level, visibility is not very good.