The majority of companies are putting more emphasis on the full lifecycle of API management and which indicates its significance in the market. But do you know the meaning of the full lifecycle of management? Is there any difference between API lifecycle management & full lifecycle API management? Put your mind at ease as we’ll dive into the answers to all these questions.
The Meaning of Full Lifecycle API Management
Full lifecycle API management refers to the complete management of an API system right from its creation to its retirement. Simply, it encompasses the full lifespan of an API during its digital transformation. However, it requires an effective cutting-edge strategy for securing, finding, reusing, and governing APIs.
The Meaning of API Lifecycle Management
API lifecycle management refers to the process in which we create, control, and consume the APIs across the full lifecycle. When you adopt API lifecycle management, one is easily able to do more than build an API. However, you can manage, analyze and monetize APIs like a cakewalk.
API lifecycle management is one of the types of lifecycle management.
The Major difference between full lifecycle API management & API lifecycle management
The responsibility of API lifecycle management is only to put emphasis on API management. Full lifecycle API management, on the other hand, helps you to connect with the delivery environment which is a wider software by enabling CI/CD.
Why is the Demand for Full Lifecycle API Management increasing in Enterprises?
The exponential increase in the demand for full lifecycle API management in enterprises is becoming challenging. However, your APIs get evolved into business-critical assets and multiply with that. APIs are not stand-alone assets but are typically decoupled and therefore, they should be part of the wider software delivery environment. For example, full lifecycle API management should fit in with an existing CI/CD-based software delivery approach. CI/CD includes build automation and test automation.
A Cutting-edge Strategy Requires a good full lifecycle API management solution
Now, many companies are adopting the API management ecosystem, and subsequently, its usage has spread across the globe in all aspects of the business. All the services or applications like mobile apps, user interaction tracking, procurement services are running via API and serving customers with a rich user experience. However, if you want to survive in this market, you will need to adopt all the latest technologies to win the market. The API structure of an enterprise should have capabilities to cater to all the business requirements. And, these plethoras of keys can only be managed through a lifecycle API management solution.
A full lifecycle API management is the foundation of an organization’s digital transformation efforts
An enterprise can build its digital enterprise in the most convenient manner so that it can expose its internal systems to both third parties & organizations themselves. However, when it comes to evolving things, organizations will need to measure, monitor the APIs, check the traffic for certain parties, create, update, removing the APIs. And, building this software in-house becomes complex, and asking for some technical experience. Additionally, you will need to comply with all periodically changing government rules & regulations while publishing your APIs. You can’t ignore these rules; however, you’ll need to adhere to them. The ultimate example of this is the Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) for European banks.
So, in nutshell, one can say that full lifecycle API management is the backbone of enterprise operational activity and API delivery.
The aim of Full lifecycle API Management
The ultimate motive behind the full lifecycle API management is mentioned below-
- Make the APIs available that is easy to consume and well defined
- Ensuring system integration & security
- In terms of the large number of APIs that you expose or may expose over time.
- As well as gradually covering the organizational diversity with a federated architecture.
The Increase in Full Lifecycle API Management For Digital Transformation
Many enterprises have used APIs to share business capabilities for decades. But, these were primarily share with specific, often internal, consumer audiences. So, APIs were primarily used for technical integration purposes. These were often with a limited scope (project, a specific department, etc.). And there was typically no governance apply. These days, however, enterprises are often updating their vision on the significance of APIs. APIs are now part of a wider digital transformation program. As a result, API lifecycle management no longer fits the requirements. Instead, you need full lifecycle API management.
The Best Way to Drive Business Value With Full Lifecycle API Management
If you want to drive business value from full lifecycle API management, follow the below-mentioned things-
- How do I ensure that the APIs in my production environment are configure as I expect them to be? (In other words, have all their critical features configured properly.)
- How do I ensure that my APIs are configure in accordance with the lifecycle stage/environment they are progressing through?
- In the case of cloud deployment, are cloud-specific security policies correctly apply?
- How can I effectively manage API security and other critical aspects across all relevant organizational units within the enterprise?
These concerns are very real, and there are good reasons to address them head-on. Flaws introduced in the early development stages of API lifecycle management typically have a much larger impact when not fixed in those early stages.
At the same time, validated API configurations should only see updates that are a direct consequence of stage promotion. All other configuration details should remain consistent. For example, critical security policies, once applied to the API, should remain associated with the API across all subsequent lifecycle stages.
Manage Your API With DigitalAPICraft
DigitalAPICraft is one of India’s trusted company delivering several kinds of APIs solutions like healthcare APIs, health APIs, Banking APIs, and many more. And. in order to have successful full lifecycle API management, you must have a reliable API platform which is only DigitalAPICraft.
