Enterprise API Management Observations, Trends, and Predictions for 2025

For many corporations, the use of APIs has become a mainstream though quintessential aspect of their IT architecture. In 2025, exchanging data between enterprise systems is done largely, if not exclusively, through the use of APIs. Consequently, the successful and continuous execution of business processes now depends to a large extent on these APIs.

To optimize discovery, governance and operations, enterprise API products are typically handled using an API management solution. Enterprise API management solutions offer a broad range of capabilities that help to facilitate successful API utilization while ensuring that the required levels of security, performance and observability are met. Read on to learn more about:

Factors That Influence Success of an API Program

In cases where APIs and their management have reached this critical stage, we have observed two essential factors that have a significant impact on the continued success of the API program:

1. The quality of the relationship/partnership with the (APIM) vendor. A strong relationship implies a shared understanding of objectives and a mutual commitment to achieve these objectives.
    

   For example, product upgrades will be aligned with operational upgrade windows; in addition, processes will be in place to quickly resolve incidental issues. Moreover, this also ensures that the vendor is responsive to customization needs if and when these arise, in particular when driven by compliance requirements or the need for  security patching. Effective interaction between customer and vendor product management, support and professional services is key for success;
    

2. The reliability of the solution itself. Criticality demands robust operational capabilities to help ensure uninterrupted business processes (think resilience, scalability) as well as the protection of valuable enterprise data assets.

What Are Some of the Main Observations and Trends for 2025? 

With established business criticality comes an inevitable, increased focus on API platform quality aspects like reliability, resilience and robustness. Perceived from an enterprise perspective, concerns seem to revolve around expected platform quality rather than new product features. At this point, even the promise of GenAI is met with quite some hesitation, mainly due to data privacy and security concerns; moreover, some verticals (in which we mainly find our customers) are subject to regulation that limits GenAI adoption at this time.

Increased criticality typically goes hand in hand with stricter governance, which can be induced by company policies or driven by regulatory requirements. As a result, the quality of the API platform needs to be affirmed continuously, and any  vulnerabilities need to be fixed ASAP. 

Security concerns are often also addressed in underlying standards and specifications. The API platform must keep aligned with any new version that become available as an additional means to ensure protection of enterprise data and systems; hence, they should be prioritized on the solution’s product roadmap.

API Trends for 2025

Some of the main trends that we see with API product development, API platform deployment and operational management.

API Product Development

The need for speed, quality and consistency constitutes the main driver behind API development. Automation is an inevitable step forward, with API product creation increasingly being integrated with CI/CD pipelines. To facilitate this, API product development tools must be integrated with existing CI/CD tools and should offer the means to easily do so. 

The quality of any API should be carefully monitored; the overall development architecture must therefore allow for the effective embedding of associated governance processes. As an example, API (product) promotion across non-production and production environments greatly benefits from an automated approach, which ensures speed and consistency. However, quality gates remain necessary to ensure that only approved artefacts ultimately make it to production.

Highlight: ensure effective runtime asset lifecycle management (DevOps)

Ensuring that API products and related artifacts correctly end up in a production environment, and that only approved artifacts make it there, requires a reliable, governed asset promotion process. 

In a modern DevOps environment, this process should be aligned with and supported by available DevOps tooling and procedures.

Integration with Git is a common approach, where Git is used as the source of all artifacts and governance tasks are being delegated to Git.

From an API product perspective, this approach has as an additional benefit that API product sources and the corresponding code deliverables can be sourced/managed from a single repository environment.

API Platform Deployment

From a deployment perspective, we see a need for effective, zero-downtime solution upgrades that can be planned in alignment with internal update windows. This allows for upgrades in a most cost-effective manner without disrupting business processes.

We should not forget that internal compliancy demands and external regulatory demands may force incidental patching; we see a steady growth in the number of security vulnerabilities that are discovered. Organizations must be prepared to quickly deploy patches outside of regular update cycles to mitigate risks and protect critical systems. At the same time, vendors should be able to deliver such patches in a way that minimizes the deployment effort.

API Operations

Finally, from an operational perspective, once APIs are published and consumed, observability is key. This applies to both the health of the deployment platform (API gateways) and to the behaviour observed with individual APIs. We noticed an increased demand for end-to-end traffic visibility and effective troubleshooting. Ultimately, monitoring data should be collected in centralized enterprise monitoring systems.

Looking for expert assistance with your Akana API platform in 2025? Akana Professional Services can help. 

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