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Architecting and Securing an
API-Driven Economy
Authors
Doug Simmons – Principal Consulting Analyst
Gary Rowe – CEO, Principal Consulting Analyst
Abstract
Businesses require nimble capabilities to develop, deploy and retire myriad online applications that power their Digital Enterprises, electronic commerce initiatives and deliver significant revenue to the bottom line. Never has this been more prevalent than in the past 20 months, when the COVID-19 pandemic sent millions to the shelter of their own homes and spurred an unprecedented move towards online customer interaction for the acquisition of goods and services. In addition to e-commerce facing applications, the emergent work-from-home culture established an employer-employee relationship that depended as much on the efficacy of enterprise IT applications as it once did on face-to-face contact.
As TechVision Research has been emphasizing for the past several years, a combination of loose-coupling, virtualization and federation are critical characteristics for digital transformation and enterprise IT as a whole. Secure, API-enabled microservices create an ‘abstraction layer’ that can dramatically simplify application development, integration, data security, privacy, and operational support.
Never before was the spectre of legacy application development, deployment and support exposed for its inefficiencies. The traditional approach to application development, often referred to as ‘waterfall’, was naturally seen as too slow, too error prone, and too rigid. Bearing in mind that necessity is the mother of invention, the often-aspired but somewhat rarely achieved adoption of Agile software development techniques became paramount to remaining in business. With this comes the understanding of just how important Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are to enabling and securing the modern Digital Enterprise. This highly actionable report provides a context and strategy for effectively embracing the “API economy” as a critical function of an overall enterprise IT strategy. We also describe a few significant vendor offerings in this emerging, but rapidly developing category.
