Top Trends Driving the Data Center in 2015
In another sign that API management is becoming a feature of larger integration frameworks, SnapLogic has announced it has partnered with both 3Scale and Restlet to embed API management inside the SnapLogic Elastic Integration Platform that is invoked as a cloud service.
Darren Cunningham, vice president of marketing for SnapLogic, says rather than build out its own API management platform, SnapLogic is opting to partner with third parties to provide access to that functionality. Because of that open approach, Cunningham says it’s probable that over time SnapLogic will support multiple API management frameworks.
While the SnapLogic core integration platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) engine resides in the cloud, the data integration process itself can be executed on premise or in the cloud using Snaps components and Snaps connectors. Cunningham says that approach is in keeping with 3Scale and Restlet, which both support different forms of hybrid approaches to API management.
While the API economy as a whole is apparently flourishing, there continues to be a debate emerging on both where API management should be executed and who in the IT organization should manage it. Some argue that API management is better provided in the cloud as a shared central resource, while others say that for performance and security reasons it should be primarily provided on premise. Over time, it’s likely that API management, much like data integration in the age of the hybrid cloud, will become federated.
Less clear is what part of the process the IT organization will manage. Given the fact that APIs are primarily created by developers, most of the management functions associated with those APIs have remained in the hands of developers. At the same time, however, as DevOps as a whole becomes more integrated, more responsibility for API management is moving into the hands of the IT operations teams that also typically manage data integration.
Regardless of the ultimate outcome, the one thing that is for certain is that going forward there will be a lot more of those APIs to manage.
