There are dozens of API gateway use cases for the large enterprise. But what is an API gateway? And when should you use one? While APIs and API management have become widespread, the best practices surrounding API gateways continue to confuse many organizations.
Here are four critical API gateway use cases for the large enterprise.
1. Simplifying Microservices Complexity
Microservices architectures have become a common application framework. These architectures help large organizations utilize features from many applications in a variety of environments.
Yet one major problem arises when an organization embarks on this path. Digital complexity.
Microservices architectures unleash hundreds, sometimes thousands, of application endpoints. These endpoints must be secured, managed, and regularly updated or tested. While APIs are perfect for grappling with this complexity, the API gateway is the technical mechanism that makes it possible.
API gateways simplify microservices architectures in the following ways:
- Consolidates rate limiting, token authorization, scaling up or down, and routing in a single mediation layer (the gateway).
- Decouples the applications from the API management layer to provide a single interface for managing the microservices environment.
- Allows organizations to manage endpoints centrally via APIs and an API management solution.
2. Improving Security
Every large enterprise must stay abreast of the changing security landscape. New threats emerge every year, sometimes every month. And did you know APIs have become the leading threat vector for application security?
A key use for API gateways is improving application and API security. How?
The API gateway sits outside your application architecture. By setting security alerts and thresholds at the gateway layer, you can stop more threats before they reach your systems. API gateways improve security in the following ways:
- Stops SQL injections, DoS attacks, and malicious API and application activity through security policies managed at the gateway level.
- The team can implement custom security settings for each API or application managed via the gateway. This allows teams to segment dangerous traffic or environments.
- Rate limiting and session information can be managed and automated at the gateway level – minimizing risk and helping the team moderate external threats.
3. Delivering Scale For Your API Footprint
A mature API gateway strategy sets you up to succeed at scale with APIs. As your business and API management footprint evolve, you need a flexible solution to support your business.
Without an API gateway, you’re likely managing APIs and applications in multiple silos. This sets your organization up for human error and inefficiency. As you build more APIs to support a large global enterprise, the gateway affords you a simple solution for scaling up and down based on your technical needs.
Selecting the right API gateway can simplify scaling APIs and applications in various environments.
So what should you look for when selecting an API gateway?
- A solution that delivers rapid user authentication and authorization features.
- A platform that is compliant with relevant message security protocols.
- A tool that offers mediation and digital transformation support.
- Automated analytics and monitoring features.
4. Improving API Monitoring and Analytics
API monitoring involves keeping tabs on API performance. This is all about whether your APIs are technically doing what they should. On the other hand, API analytics are focused on how your APIs are being used. This is all about whether you are gaining API adoption, how APIs are being utilized in various environments, and other API-based consumer metrics.
One of the most important use cases for the API gateway is to improve API monitoring and analytics capabilities. The right gateway can do this in the following ways:
- Provides interoperability with various third-party monitoring and analytics packages. Not all API gateway solutions offer this.
- Allows you to rapidly assess the health of APIs and their usage in developer portals, and end-user environments.
- Monitoring and analytics capabilities are easy for the DevOps, CI, and CD teams to quickly incorporate with other processes.
Test Drive the Akana API Gateway For 6 Months
Akana offers a comprehensive API gateway solution designed for Fortune 500 organizations. It provides an easy way to securely transform the enterprise without sacrificing speed. Unlike many gateway solutions, the Akana API gateway offers more than an API proxy. It provides an actual API mediation layer in order to protect your enterprise systems and data.
With the Akana API gateway, you’ll have access to:
- Power: Protect data associated with your APIs confidently and with little effort.
- Resilience: Let Akana be your runtime gatekeeper and do the heavy lifting.
- Flexibility: Put the Akana API Gateway anywhere you need it and manage it centrally.
Click below to find out if you qualify for a 30-day Akana free trial.