API Proliferation in Large Enterprises Means a Need to "Shift Left"

This month's newsletter and resources focus on API proliferation. As your number and types of APIs (+Services and Events) grow, your enterprise will face (or may already be facing):

• Growing security concerns
• Hard to enforce governance and standards
• Inconsistent APIs and duplication
• Increasing API sprawl and complexity
• Hard to find developer talent

In fact, Gartner predicts by 2025, less than 50% of APIs will be managed. So how do you mature your API program to overcome these challenges?

It's a combination of strategy, process and tooling that starts with a catalog.

Catalogs ensure large enterprises aren't flying blind as their APIs grow. They give you insight into:

• What you have and what you don't have - when organized around business capabilities you can see just how good your coverage is or isn't
• How good what you have is - does it meet the standards and governance rules your organization is trying to enforce (and better yet, in an automated way)
• What APIs should be promoted as reusable ones
• Potential risks, say where PII (personal identifiable information) flows through your ecosystem

They also help you shift left of traditional API Management - which you're likely already outgrowing and finding have limitations for adopting API-first at scale.

We're seeing a growing trend in our customers and the space in general of shifting left of multiple runtimes to one location that allows you to capture, manage, discover, record relationships and dependencies, and reuse APIs that you make reusable. And, also shifting left to focus on how APIs are planned, designed, governed, secured, built, updated, and bundled while maintaining focus on where they're run.

You can learn more about the concept of shifting left in our latest blog originally published on Nordic APIs - It's Time to Shift Left of Traditional API Management

More Resources:

Blogs

Data Privacy as a Differentiator

When it comes to securing sensitive data in APIs, "perimeter-based, one time masking, and production-only API security are not enough, says our CTO Sayee Bapatla.

Complex Application Landscape to Reliable APIs in 5 Steps

Follow a proven use case from one of our banking customers (but is applicable to all verticals) and shows you how to move from complex application landscape to reliable APIs. We’ll look at 5 simple steps to making a complex change to a mission-critical application without affecting production APIs using ignite.

6 Ways to Mature your API Governance

There are many drivers for a mature API governance beyond being a manual, time-consuming task loaded onto developers. And organizations that are getting ahead with their governance maturity are gaining a competitive edge.

Videos

We recently launched a new video series called "ignite Bites". These videos share quick tips on how to tackle key areas on your way to a mature API strategy and program.

What we're reading

API usage up at most organizations, but large amounts go undocumented

Coinbase's CEO discusses operating efficiently at scale - two themes we love: leverage shared services to minimize duplication and APIs instead of meetings