The Complete Guide to API Integration and Universal API Management

Written by Harini Krish

Lead Technical Content Writer

A Brief History of APIs and How They are Changing the World We Live In

On average, modern enterprises utilize up to 500 APIs (Application Programming Interface). These APIs come in many different forms and specifications and serve unique functions across heterogeneous environments and diverse architectures within a large enterprise.

As APIs sprawl across the technology estate, IT runs into challenges in discovering, managing, and protecting all of the organization's APIs. In addition, this API sprawl prevents the business from reaching its vision of agility and composability since it limits how fast its teams can build new capabilities and customer experiences.

What is an API? And What is it Good For?

An API is a set of functions that lets applications access data and interact with external software components, operating systems, or microservices. For example, an API provides a user response to a system and sends the system's response back to a user to make things easier.

Making data available via API can support faster and more accessible data migration and improved data quality review and cleanup. In addition, APIs can deliver greater flexibility in providing services, for instance, using a service that accesses a backend system to drive a new product.

3 Reasons Why You Should Be Using APIs Right Now

A shared code that connects two or more sections of a program is referred to as an API. An API is just a collection of instructions that both the client and the server understand. But, let's understand why we need to talk about APIs in the first place? One reason is that APIs are required for the development of reliable apps. They simplify coding for developers and make it easier to reuse functionality, but they also allow secure connections across systems, improving user experience. You may be interested to read this blog on Integration Challenges and Modern-Day Assessment and Royal Cyber’s Architecture and Integration Maturity Assessment Model.

Furthermore, the API functions as a translator between systems, converting data types into something that the other application can understand. This eliminates the need for costly software conversions and decreases system incompatibility.

  • APIs Can Help with Your Business Strategy

  • APIs Assist in Data Management

  • APIs Promote Business Growth

Bridging the Transformation Gap with Universality

The composable enterprise is predicted to evolve in the future years, implying that firms will seek out new ways to improve their composability and hence increase their agility.

Consumer markets are projected to lead the way in terms of innovation, with businesses assembling their operations into bundled business capabilities to respond to customer wants more quickly. Organizations must now utilize technology to produce corporate value, provide seamless customer experiences, and act as change agents in the process.

IT teams must capture the full potential of their heterogeneous environments, diverse architectures, and various gateways as enterprises implement this across the enterprise without changing the entire infrastructure. This means that each component of the ecosystem must be controlled, governed, observed, and discovered through a single, global control plane.

APIs have evolved from being used for integration to being used to drive composability in organizations. Enterprises, on the other hand, require universality in order to achieve this at scale. Regardless of the technology, design, or environment, universality enables organizations to create, connect, and control their ecosystem. When it comes to API administration, universality helps the company get closer to composability.

Read this Case Study along learn how we helped leading retailer in significant operational & license cost savings.

What is Universal API Management?

The ability to expose the scope of entire lifecycle management capabilities ie management, governance, observability, and discoverability to APIs produced and deployed anywhere is known as universal API management. It's the next step in API administration, providing a more open, adaptable, and scalable solution.

To accomplish this, businesses must ensure that their technological stack can:

  • Work With Any API - Enterprises are enhancing their RESTful APIs with protocols like AsyncAPI, GraphQL, and gRPC when using microservices. Organizations may collaborate with any API, regardless of its origin or protocol, thanks to universal API management.
  • Operate in Any Cloud - With universal API management, APIs, as well as their governance, observability, and discoverability features can run in any cloud, regardless of whether the platform is hybrid, cloud, or hosted.
  • Implement Any Architecture - From monolithic applications to microservices, there are a range of architectures to choose from. Organizations may operate with any architectural pattern by safeguarding all of their services, regardless of size, using universal API management.
  • Engage Any Audience - Enterprises with universal API management have a central repository for their APIs, allowing both internal and external audiences to benefit from them, improve customer experiences, and promote partnerships and business models.

How Universality Enables the Composable Business

Universal API management allows CIOs to accomplish all of their business requirements across a heterogeneous technology stack, including creating a digital ecosystem, safeguarding the organization's data, boosting business agility, and future-proofing the technology stack.

Enabling a Digital Ecosystem for Your Business?

The digital ecosystem of a company is the culmination of its technology stack, which includes data, cloud, networks, interfaces, and more. Every company must develop a comprehensive strategy that maintains its technology and data running smoothly while also allowing it to take advantage of future cloud advances. They must guarantee that teams across the organization can readily access and process data in order to generate business objectives, which includes ensuring that the ecosystem can work with any cloud technologies to offer revolutionary value to data management. Many businesses, including some Fortune 500 organizations, still don't have a central catalog for all of their APIs.

To properly administer their multi/hybrid cloud environments, organizations want a single source of truth that provides universal discovery for all of their APIs. Read our whitepaper to know the value of API integration in today’s digital economy, and find out the best practices for building a winning API strategy.

Summary

Future-proofing empowers an organization and its technology to adjust to rapidly changing market needs. Royal Cyber ensures that any new technology the organizations invest in will be long-lasting to avoid ripping and swapping it later. Composing your organization with the building blocks of universal API management on an open, flexible, and scalable platform, making it a reality. It lets the organization's existing technology to be fitting with future innovations while keeping previous investments. This assures that the technology stack will deliver long-term value to the business without missing out on any cutting-edge innovations with MuleSoft.

Royal Cyber is a MuleSoft certified partner. We are proud to be a desired partner to provide MuleSoft solutions, bringing together its implementation skills with definite business knowledge in the integration landscape. With Royal Cyber’s MuleSoft expertise, your organization should embrace APIs as a vital product to enable digital transformation at speed and reveal its ability to achieve a composable enterprise. Our services are customized to our client’s needs and delivered with innovative methodologies, tools, and products that can help accelerate MuleSoft implementation and reduce cost and risk. We know how to leverage the power of the MuleSoft Anypoint platform to help our clients build a future-proof integration platform. Digital transformation is already a reality; get in touch with our experts to kick start your journey. For more information you can email us at info@royalcyber.com or visit www.royalcyber.com.

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