Why do we need an API Gateway?

  I was recently evaluating multiple gateways which can serve different requirements like throttling, reporting, security, access control, response format conversion. The companies see an increasing value in opening up their services and sell the services provided by their applications, which till now was only consumed privately within the organization. Security becomes a pivotal issue when you start opening up services to multiple consumers. That’s where the more sophisticated open API management becomes important and API Gateways /Enterprise Gateways play critical role in fulfilling this requirements.

              Going forward, the traditional approach of B2B/EDI gateways will be replaced with more API based integration or the cloud based integration leveraging the API. EDI Gateways will be more for high volume data where as new cloud based REST or SOAP API’s will be more popular for real-time customer engagement  

One of the options is to custom build a solution which can perform these requirements on OSB platform.  Other option is to evaluate existing gateway products and see the pros and cons along with licensing costs/ROI. The first option of product will be Oracle API Gateway or Vordel’s API Gateway.  Both are the same. Oracle just licensed it to sell in their name. It actually meets all the requirements that Oracle was envisioning in the 2010 whitepaper .

Other option is APIGEE which also looked like a new PAAS (Platform as a service) solution which helps you in easily developing/maintain/hosting the REST based services.

I will write more on this topic in coming blogs.

References ::

http://www.soatothecloud.com/2012/04/vordel-api-gateway-video-demo.html

Vordel:: http://www.vordel.com/oracle/

APigee :: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3W6JSgGoO_o