The simple path to API management

When large multinationals like Amazon and Google make their interfaces publicly available for general use, the focus for an insurer is on making sure all communication partners are satisfied and on establishing long-lasting business relationships. This creates a personal relationship to individual business partners, which is not the case with public interfaces offered by a major corporation. When it comes to setting up, maintaining and protecting the interfaces of an insurance company, there are a number of challenges associated with delivering the level of quality necessary to satisfy the needs of each and every business partner. To meet the expectations that different users of an interface have, achieving high standards in terms of performance and resilience takes centre stage. It is critical here to ensure that the systems and data are protected at all times.

The illustration below shows the evolution of interfaces in the banking and insurance sectors over the past years and demonstrates a clear need for insurance companies to utilise a comprehensive API management system.

API management sounds highly technical and might lead one to believe that all that is required to design a practical API is to be careful to ensure that no errors occur during the software development phase. However, that is not correct. While this is an extremely important aspect and involves many pitfalls, there are many other important aspects of IT besides software development that need to be considered early on in the process.

Within a service landscape and when communicating with external partners, in particular, the goal should be to design interfaces that are downward compatible. This is necessary to ensure that can be developed independently. Yet, how can downward compatible APIs be achieved without becoming bogged down in the never-ending, time-consuming task of maintaining old interfaces or versions of interfaces? Which versioning strategies should be used in which situations, and which ones should actually be implemented?

The life cycle of an API shows that, in addition to design and implementation, the planning and subsequent monitoring and management of an interface’s use play a critical role.

There are a number of questions in terms of implementation, and above all else, establishing an interface:

• How do you go about setting up and implementing the API with an accompanying versioning strategy, and where do you start?
• Which tools and technologies do you use?
• How do you safeguard the interface against misuse and attacks?
• How do you ensure that a large volume of requests can also be processed without affecting the downstream systems?
• How do I document my interfaces, and how do I integrate partners?
• How do you decide whether the interfaces are suitable and can also be used?
• How can the legacy systems be migrated to the new APIs while still maintaining continuity?

Thanks to its combination of technical industry know-how and technological expertise, adesso is able to support you in setting up and operating your API ecosystem. In addition to holding workshops and architecture reviews, we offer you years of experience working with the latest technologies as well as the systematic approach we employ. Security is given centre stage through our use of the adesso Secure Development Lifecycle.

This is demonstrated by our references from the insurance industry. Get in touch with us.