Choosing the right API platform
What is the right API Platform for your business?
This is a question commonly asked by businesses when looking at digital transformation and looking to expose their data internally or externally. Furthermore, over the years a business may ask this question a more than once as they change business direction, people and technology forces it to consider the API platform that is right for them. The answer on which API platform is best is going to depend on what’s right for the business - and there are many aspects to consider when looking at which API platform is right for you.
In this post we’ll briefly go through what questions you need to ask when choosing an API platform, which technologies are best fit for answering those questions and the steps you can take to make the right choice.
To help you narrow down the choices we’ll have a look at how the current top-rated Gartner Magic Quadrant API Lifecycle Management Platforms (2021) stack-up;
Google (Apigee), Axway, IBM, Kong, Microsoft, Mulesoft and Software AG.
Questions to ask
The following list of questions and which platforms best answers those questions is not designed to be exhaustive, but it will help you to narrow-down your choice to 2-3 providers, and could provide a clear choice for you to proceed with. Before we begin, full disclosure, we are a reseller of Google Cloud Platform, which includes Apigee (in the top quadrant) and this is where most of our experience comes from, however we’ve tried to provide as balanced a view as possible. OK, let’s get started with the questions.
Geographic questions
Assuming you need to host within Australia (yes, we’re an Australian company and proudly so), there are many options available from Cloud SaaS, Hybrid and full-deployments on-premise.
Do you need this as a managed service on the cloud? - many businesses want to reduce the amount of infrastructure they need to manage, and therefore a SaaS-like solution is ideal as it allows the business to focus on what’s important to the business- the API.
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Google (Apigee), IBM, Microsoft and Software AG all have SaaS API Platforms in Australia. |
Need geographic redundancy in your API Platform managed service? - if you’ve made the decision to go with a SaaS-like offering on cloud, then you may need to consider DR capabilities and maximise your Service Availability for your APIs. If this is the case 2 providers suit;
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Google (Apigee) and Microsoft have 2 x regions in Australia (Sydney and Melbourne) |
Need the API platform on-premise, or in your own self-managed VPC? - sometimes you need to run the gateway on your own infrastructure, this could come from regulatory requirements, that you have data centre assets to sweat, or even proximity needs. This being the case all the API platform providers in the top-quadrant provide solutions for on-premise.
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Google (Apigee) has both OPDK and Hybrid, Axway with Amplify, IBM API Connect, Kong, Microsoft with APIM Self-hosted gateway, Mulesoft Anypoint and Software AG with webMethods. |
Pricing questions
We won’t necessarily go into the details of which is the best bang-for-buck because pricing is quite complex, and very hard to get an apples-for-apples comparison. If I was cynical I would say it’s designed that way, well that’s probably the practical answer too. We suggest you run some modelling of your API traffic (even if your numbers are guesswork at this stage) to best understand the pricing impact from each shortlisted vendor.
Your’e a CAPEX business and you can’t get OPEX? - You’re now looking at old-school perpetual licences, which these days is very hard to come by as everyone has PAYG or subscription models, which is nearly impossible to capitalise unless you buy multiple years in advance. This being the case you’re probably stuck with the following 2 vendors;
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Google (Apigee) with OPDK and Software AG. |
Got the people, but no budget? - Here you need to build it yourself and go for an open-source model, being aware that support from the vendor isn’t going to be there, but if you’ve got great developers in your company this may be an option for you.
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Kong is free to download and run yourself. You can also get a free-tier of IBM API Connect, although it’s limited to 50,000 API calls per month. |
Need a PAYG plan? - We would always recommend for customers to start with a PAYG plan if they can, especially if they are not sure what their API workload is going to look like, as locking in a subscription plan you may end up spending more money than you need to (and which you can always switch across to at a later date once traffic profiles are better understood).
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Google (Apigee), IBM, Kong and Microsoft all offer PAYG plans, although they all differ slightly in how they are rated, therefore it’s still worth modelling out your expected traffic. |
Developer program questions
An API Platform is designed to provide APIs for a broad set of API users (Developers), therefore a platform with better developer program management and capabilities is going to offer better engagement and take-up rates for your APIs.
Need to reach a broad developer audience? - this is especially important if you’re externalizing APIs for the public. Thankfully all the platforms in the top quadrant offer great developer program management capabilities. Apigee does have a small edge here though in it’s ability to have multiple developer programs (to segment developers) and have teams and companies of developers (to allow external users to manage their own user access to your APIs).
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All platforms in the top quadrant. |
Need a developer portal? - As APIs themselves have no UI, there is no visible interface in which to interact with, and they are effectively “invisible” to the user, therefore a developer portal is critical for your APIs to be discovered and for instructions on how the users of the APIs are going to use them. Without a developer portal (and API documentation) your APIs may as well not exist. Thankfully all platforms assessed have developer portals, although some are more comprehensive than others. Google (Apigee) seem to have the most comprehensive solution with their integrated portal, a Drupal 8 portal for high customization and even the Apigee APIs available to build a portal from the ground up. Google also allows you to publish multiple portals to the one gateway letting you segment different APIs for different developer audiences (e.g. internal vs external APIs).
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All platforms in the top quadrant, however Apigee has the most extensibility and options. |
Do you need to Monetize APIs? - If you are looking at selling access to your data or products through an API you want to choose a platform that offers great monetization capabilities. Google (Apigee) is the only API Platform that offers a built-in monetization engine that manages the end-to-end monetization of API products for developers (from setting plans, to currency, transaction recording policies, portal integration, prepaid and post-paid plans and payment gateway options). A number of other platforms (Axway, IBM, Microsoft, Mulesoft and Software AG) state they offer monetization, but it is just a foundation layer and other products are required to quiesce the API transaction data, set plans, rate and bill customers.
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Google (Apigee) is the only platform with end-to-end monetization capability, |
Extensibility questions
Sometimes you need more than just an API Gateway out-of-the-box, and so extensibility of the API platform software becomes an important consideration.
Need integration capability as well (iPaaS)? - On top of RESTful APIs, do you need something that handles heavily logic and translation between systems. Purchasing an all-in-one solution that handles integration and RESTful APIs can be an important differentiator, and so adding in features that allow for system-to-system type communication that needs automated workflows, dealing with non-restful interfaces, doing heavy translation could sway your decision.
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Axway, Mulseoft and SoftwareAG all offer integration capabilities from their out-of-the-box software. It’s worth noting that IBM and Microsoft also have separate products available that allow for integration capabilities. *See note. |
Self-construct new components? - Perhaps the out-of-the-box solution is never going to cut it, and you know that you will have requirements that will require a customised API gateway.
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Kong then is your only choice. Kong has the capability of you building new plug-ins (a Kong Plugin), just keep in mind you’ll need to be able to support these yourself. |
Support questions
When putting your solution into production you’ll regularly need to use support to help you troubleshoot issues and provide fixes. As API platforms are complex and very configurable pieces of software, having strong levels of community support, great documentation and responsive support is very important.
Strong community support? - This is a top consideration. Invariably your API developers, and those configuring the platform will need to rely on community support to help them solve problems, and find solutions to issues that have been solved by others. This can save a huge amount of time if the community is extensive.
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Apigee, Mulesoft and Software AG have the most extensive community support in the tens-of-thousands of posts. The other platforms only have hundreds or thousands of posts meaning that problems you come across may need to be solved by the individual that came across it. |
Enterprise-grade support and documentation? - Platforms need to have a responsive support team from the vendor that they can call on if they have any issues. Also how-to articles, sample code, API reference documentation and set-up guides are critical pieces of documentation to help engineers build and maintain the platform and for API developers to create great APIs. All the platforms look to have great documentation (although it is a little difficult to find and navigate IBM and Software AG documentation, and Microsoft documentation is very light-on). Overall not all support is created equal and it would be worth getting the perspective from operations leaders that have dealt with the software before to understand how well it stacks up.
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All platforms in the top quadrant. |
Steps You Can Take
Apart from answering these questions, what are the concrete steps you can take to make the right decision for your business.
Run a proof-of-concept - We did this recently with a client of ours, and it is probably the truest and cheapest (in the long run) way to assess the best platform for your organization. Once you’ve narrowed down the choice to a handful (2 or 3) of API Platforms, get the vendors to build a POC solution based on a fairly benign, but real, API that you would use. Put the platform through it’s paces with performance and penetration testing. You can then get a good view, with experience, across almost all the considerations for choosing an API platform.
Interview others - Use your contacts in the IT industry to find out what other people run as their API platform, what is good and bad about it and whether or not they would make the same choice again. What is stated on the box doesn’t always translate to reality. For example; enterprise support is offered by all platforms in the top quadrant, but some of those have lackluster response and restore times, especially if you come across a bug or need to understand how to do something. Supportability should be one of your key question topics when interviewing others about the API platform they are running.
Document your strategy - By documenting your API strategy (against the strategic goals of your business) you can assess what features and functions of an API Platform are more important then others. This make narrow down the list to a clear choice.
Get business support - without business support for your API Platform, even if you choose the right one, it won’t be successful.
Other considerations
There are many facets to consider when making an important and strategic decision. Lastly, here are some other important considerations when making the choice for your platform.
Know your history - To make sure you will make the right decision you need to know your history. If this is not you first API-platform-choice rodeo then you’re well-placed to lean on your experience. But even so, knowing the choices people have made and why they chose an API Platforms can help you to avoid making the mistake of choosing the wrong platform. So if you don’t have experience with API platforms, and deciding which one is best, borrow other people’s experience; ask others how they made their decision, what their current API platform is and what they like and dislike about it.
Technology lifecycle - Is the technology a going concern? Will they exist in 5 years time? Over the last 5 years most clients I have dealt with have changed their API Platform, however some, especially where the platform is deeply embedded in the organizations core business, have had the same API platform for over 5 years. If you make a decision expect to stick with that technology for at least 5 years, if not 10-15 years. Think about whether the vendor will be there for you into the long term, the partner ecosystem size (can you get professional services in easily to help you with the platform) and whether the technology aligns with your business strategy.
Cloud ecosystem lock-in - This is particular for smaller and medium businesses, that are more likely to have a one-cloud strategy, they will embrace the API Platform technology on their cloud-of-choice. Where-as larger companies already have multiple clouds (multi-cloud) as part of their tools, and therefore are more flexible at avoiding cloud-lock-in. If you do have a one-cloud strategy you should review the API Platform from that cloud first, and be prepared to defend your decision on an API Platform technology that diverts from the one-cloud-to-rule-them-all strategy.
API of the future - what technology can you expect to see in the future that could alter your choice of platforms. You may not plan to do IOT, GraphQL, or real-time streaming immediately, but it could be a roadmap item your business is serious about, in which case this could sway which platform is better suited for now and the future.
The business - the API platform is a technology, but it’s only one aspect of success, and may be the least important aspect, when looking at a successful API strategy for your business. Think about business aspects such as having your business aligned to the platform (business-first rather than technology-first), having the right team in place (to build and maintain the platform), the right processes and standards to both encourage growth in API users (reducing to TTFHW) and to reduce the friction of API onboarding and allowing for self-serve onboarding. These things will contribute as much, if not more, to the chance of success than the technology.
Overall there are many things to think about with making a good API Platform choice. We’d also be happy to chat with you on helping you make that choice, or if you’d like to tell us about your current API Platform and how it’s working for you.
Reach out to us at info@sonrai.com.au if you’d like to chat further.
Thanks for reading!
* UPDATE Note: since publishing, Apigee announced (Oct-2021) a new capability on Integration allowing their Apigee X and Apigee Hybrid product to connect with existing data and backend services in a Integration-like manner. For more information see here; https://cloud.google.com/apigee/integration