Generative AI Solutions
November 22, 2023
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Microservices architectures are turning out to be one of the most popular ways of designing software applications. With a reputation to provide greater enterprise agility, microservices allow for quick changes and development of applications as compared to the traditional monolithic development approach. After all, there’s a reason why tech giants like Google, Netflix, and Amazon have adopted the model.
In the modern scenario, it’s important that microservices-based applications co-exist as well as interact with traditional ones. They must live alongside conventional systems, existing applications, and business processes, as well as current compliance and operational imperatives. To effectively implement the architecture in a setting like this, firms need to combine API with microservices.
Plus, microservices also come with certain problems such as service sprawl, risk of redundant work, and increased complexity. For most firms, mixing a microservices architecture with other deployed architectural patterns is the major challenge. API integrations are a tremendous solution to manage the flexibility and speed provided by microservices as well as eliminate complexities.
A solid API strategy allows microservices to co-exist with current legacy systems, allowing you to enjoy the benefits of microservices without having to face the drawbacks. Let’s find out more about how microservices API integration foster seamless integration:
Streamlining Applications with Microservices and APIs
APIs make it significantly easy for enterprises to synchronize microservices with traditional systems. On top of that, an API-powered strategy assists firms in exposing the functionality of microservices as products, allowing for both internal and external growth.
Besides, APIs eliminate the need for point-to-point integrations with SaaS applications and legacy systems, thereby offering incredible cost benefits. This way, organizations should be able to scale microservices up or down based on the changes in requirements.
Also, APIs allow firms to discover and reuse microservices. When developing microservices architectures that are of greater value to a specific audience, APIs will make them easily discoverable, help them reach greater audiences, and enable later use as a reusable capability.
Let’s now dig deeper into how microservices API integrations work.
How Microservices and APIs work together
Once used as low-level programming code interfaces, APIs have now become full-fledged products. They adhere to recognized standards, such as REST, that play a critical role in making them developer-friendly and emphasizing governance and management. The market for API has become highly competitive, with providers racing to capture developers’ attention.
The usage and technical requirements for APIs have greatly changed. They now require advanced portals to enable developers to discover and experiment with them. Registration and payment mechanisms and usage functions have also been subject to changes. Plus, since they’re exposed externally, APIs need robust security capabilities through API gateways. All this requires a firm capability to provide visibility, control, and governance over these technical business assets in the form of API management.
But what about the APIs exposed internally? Is there a way to establish an internal API economy? The latest, mature API management technologies have made self-service and discovery of data sources, applications, and services possible. This has put teams in a much better position to develop software in a visible and controlled way, creating an internal API economy and scaling the productivity of the IT team.
An internal API economy is even more valuable for microservices architecture. As microservices set up more endpoints, controlling connectivity becomes difficult. Nothing can prove more disastrous than attempting to create point-to-point integrations between all endpoints. In an environment as vastly distributed as that of a microservices architecture, having an API strategy is a must.
A commonly used API strategy is API-led connectivity, which is used to expose all monolithic or microservice-based, cloud, or on-premise services. This approach is a holistic, purposeful technique to use different kinds of reusable, purpose-built APIs to expose services that have to be recomposed or composed to establish easily modifiable capabilities.
For established firms with legacy, IT stack, and other cases where microservices adoption becomes more entrenched, integrating these services and deriving value from them are the biggest challenges. That’s where an API-led integration strategy comes into play, thus making microservices more useful for businesses.
Building point-to-point integrations between SaaS applications and legacy systems are outrageously costly. Standardized, productized APIs help reduce these costs. This makes plugging and unplugging microservices quicker, based on business needs, without endless amounts of custom code. APIs help organizations attain the benefits of standardized mechanisms for traffic monitoring and management, auditing, logging as well as security, all in a standardized way across the enterprise. You won’t also lose the agility your organization requires.
The API-Led Connectivity Strategy
API-led connectivity has become an important integration strategy because the technologies organizations are leveraging to handle customers, employees, and other stakeholders are rapidly changing. Businesses have realized that the convergence of technologies, such as SaaS, IoT, big data, APIs, mobile, and social, is allowing them to do more, understand customers better, innovate faster, and unlock new revenue streams.
To accomplish those benefits, however, these technologies need to be integrated with APIs. In the past, these integrations have been done in an ad hoc way through point-to-point connections. This creates brittle and complicated systems that not only consume considerable IT resources and time but are also subject to failures.
In addition, the rate at which these new systems change has also greatly increased. For example, while a banking system’s database schema may change once a year, the requirements of mobile banking apps and online banking sites may change monthly, weekly, daily, or hourly. The traditional point-to-point integration methods can’t accommodate speedy changes like these. API-connectivity is the perfect alternative.
Final Word
By now, you should have developed a clear understanding of microservices API integration, including the need and value of APIs for microservice-based applications and how the two work together. If you’re looking to streamline applications with microservices and APIs, contact Enterprise Cloud Services today.
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