I’m involved in all the R&D work, building solutions, and designing architectural designs that include Apigee and other open-source API managers. As a Google partner, my major focus is on Apigee. Another API manager, WSO2, is open source and suitable for organizations that cannot afford Google Cloud Platform services. However, I mainly use Apigee in my integration, modernization, and architectural designs.
I ensure that customers and organizations have an integration layer in their modernization journey and that layer needs an API gateway. The solution provides a complete API management solution and is one of the most important in the industry. It offers three deployment models: cloud-based, on-premises, and hybrid. I have skills and experience in building, installing, configuring, and managing all three deployment models.
Apigee is the heart of the architectural design for building an integration layer in our digital transformation projects. Organizations need an integration layer to connect their legacy backend services with the external world, such as Fintechs. This layer must be secure, not just a simple pass-through or gateway.
It must have all the capabilities of a management solution, handling all API calls with an API-first architectural design. Without an API-first approach, organizations can't connect with external parties, isolating them from the rest of the world.
An API gateway is essential for this, and it needs a management solution with a mediation layer, orchestration layer, security, and protocols. The solution must also support translation and mediation functionalities, such as easily converting JSON to XML and vice versa.
The solution, Gartner's top-ranked API management solution for seven consecutive years under Google Cloud, provides immense power and utilities.
There are three different deployment models. One is a completely SaaS-based. This deployment model is unique because organizations don't face any deployment challenges. Everything is deployed on Google Cloud, and the customer is securely connected via VPN, eliminating the need for on-prem deployment infrastructure costs. It's very user-friendly and cost-effective.
The next feature is the hybrid deployment model. This model's management layer is on the cloud, while the runtime is on-prem. This is ideal for banks or financial institutions that don't want their data on the cloud. They can keep their secure data on-prem while the management tasks, which don't require customer information, are handled in the cloud.
Then there's the on-prem solution. The versatility of the deployment models is a major feature. Another important feature is the security, traffic monitoring, analytics, and mediation layer. The solution's orchestration layer is robust, ensuring complete control of all API payload data. It offers analytics, security policies, and around 50 to 70 pre-built policies. Its low-code platform makes it easy for any software engineer to operate and manage within an organization. Policies can be applied to APIs through a simple drag-and-drop interface, and writing a policy is straightforward with pre-written codes and templates.
The third significant feature is the integrated developer portal. This portal provides developers with a smooth experience in utilizing APIs on the gateway. It offers an easy registration process, a comfortable API catalog, and a sandbox environment for testing and experimenting with APIs. These features, combined with the right orchestration layer, complete security protocols, drag-and-drop policy maintenance, and deployment versatility, make Apigee the number one ranked API management system in the industry.
The solution has an integrated developer portal that supports various content management systems like Drupal, Nginx, Angular, and more, allowing customized developer portals. For example, we recently built a dynamic, user-friendly developer portal for Network International, the largest payment integrator in the UAE, using Drupal. This portal is crucial in onboarding developers, showcasing APIs for fintech companies, and facilitating API monetization.
One feature of the developer portal is the version control mechanism, which keeps all previous versions alongside the latest ones. Another notable feature is multi-tenancy, which allows developers to select their region during registration and provides a consistent experience across different geographical placements.
The analytics and monitoring capabilities in Apigee enhance API performance enormously. You cannot manage your API layer effectively without the right analytics and monitoring tools. If you don't know which APIs are causing issues or spikes, you can't address them properly. For instance, a spike arrest policy helps by setting thresholds on certain APIs to prevent DDoS attacks and ensure resource utilization.
Apigee offers many out-of-the-box analytics and reports and the ability to build custom reports. These reports help you understand which APIs are used the most or the least, which generate more revenue, and which developers are most active.
The analytics also give a complete picture of developer engagement, showing which regions have the most active developers and which APIs are used the most in different geographical areas. This helps in managing the API ecosystem effectively.
Security analytics are also available, helping you monitor and address potential threats. The platform even provides monetization analytics, showing which APIs generate the most revenue.
