How to smartly manage APIs through their full lifecycle

The more you use something, the better you need to be at managing it. You need to take care of that device and maintain a car, and, yes, you need to manage APIs.

API use is on the rise for the very simple reason that these interfaces serve valuable purposes. They help businesses connect digital resources to value streams. They unify disparate systems. They make complicated connections simple.

What happens to all those APIs, though? You create them, use them, benefit from them and all's well. Except that it's easy to forget that you need to manage APIs once they are in action. To be useful, the interfaces need to be fixed, debugged and otherwise adjusted over time. And then, eventually, they must be retired. The surest way to guarantee these lifecycle tasks get done is by using an API management platform. With such a tool, a business can be organized about how it designs, implements and terminates APIs.

More IT teams are beginning to recognize the value in lifecycle management, and plenty of vendors are showing interest in responding to that demand. Gartner, in fact, predicts yearly corporate spending on API management will grow to as much as $660 million by 2020.

This handbook breaks down the lifecycle issues an organization will routinely confront when it attempts to manage APIs, and it examines how a management platform might alleviate those challenges.

After all, it's one thing to create an API. What happens next is a different matter, one that can easily be overlooked or forgotten altogether.

By

• Phil Sweeney, Executive Editor