In today’s times, something that we cannot change is the fact that there is no organization that has not felt the blow of digital disruption. Whether you take Netflix, Uber, Spotify, or Dropbox, they have all modified the way they work, changed their infrastructure, enhanced their architectures, and moved to the cloud to realign and meet their customer demands quickly through digitization. If you wish to remain relevant in the competitive world, you must innovate quickly and grow stronger. You have to make complete use of cutting-edge technologies and tap into the optimal potential of your business through digital transformations.
What once was a developer’s tool, is now used as a means to reach the prospect in various formats. It is done by exposing APIs. But when this happens, it is essential to retrieve the data and input coming from diverse sources. Integrating various products, processes, and people across the organizations and making the data accessible is done through API- led integration. Recently, this approach has gained a lot of popularity for its seamless connectivity and feasibility.
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The trouble with the traditional connectivity approaches
When integration was introduced decades back, P2P or Point-to-Point integration was the only option where integration was so complicated. Later, Enterprise Service Bus – ESBs were introduced in which there was a common layer or a bus through which integrations were made. However, these traditional integration solutions no longer help in scaling and innovating rapidly for businesses of today.
And there comes the API-Led connectivity approach, through which integrations were made simpler, easier, faster, and more importantly, economical.
| P2P |
ESB |
API-LED CONNECTIVITY |
| Complicated to make changes |
Inefficient to meet today’s changing needs |
Simple and easy with multiple integrations |
| High maintenance |
Demands effort for maintaining |
Low maintenance |
| High operation risk |
High operational risk |
Minimal operation risk |
| Time to market |
Longer time to market |
Quick time to market |
| No reusability |
Minimal reusability |
Build once and use for various use cases |
What is API-led connectivity?
API-led connectivity is an approach to connecting data with applications through purposeful and reusable APIs. It is neither a database interface nor a software developer’s tool confined to internal use alone. Rather, it is a business model through which companies can organize their assets, expose the APIs and connect external users across the globe. With API-led connectivity, organizations can build stronger networks, integrate applications, make businesses agile, and meet growing market needs.
With API-led connectivity, your organization will have
- 5x Faster development process
- 3x Decrease in the time to market
- 70% Reduction in the maintenance costs
- 300% Increase in productivity rate
Categories/layers of API led connectivity
The APIs are created in three different layers and are reusable, making it easy to implement new services and systems.
System APIs
This is the most important layer comprising the confidential information of the organization. This API should not be exposed to the public as it is the core of the business. Once built, these APIs can be reused by multiple users in various projects.
Process APIs
This layer helps to orchestrate the data and down the data silos, without any dependency on either the originating source system or the delivering target system. The core purpose of this Process API is to encapsulate the business process without impacting the source (System API). These are private and are not exposed to the end users or the customers.
Experience API
Through this uppermost layer of Experience API, data is manipulated to make it usable by the end users or the customers. This is exposed publicly for the target audience to use. The transformation logic is implemented in this layer and the changes are exposed through Experience API.
Benefits of having a three-layered API for your business
The API-led connectivity approach helps businesses in the following way.
- Break the data silos, connect anything with anything, and achieve a seamless data flow across the organization.
- It not only helps you deliver your IT projects on time but also saves costs through reusable assets. You don’t have to create the API assets from scratch every time instead, you can make use of these reusable ones.
- The infrastructure is designed and built for change. You can make changes as per the use cases and redesign them as they are very flexible.
- Liberates resources, accelerates your projects, and provides ample room for innovation.
- Assures long-term sustainability and increases the agility of your business.
- The API-led connectivity approach helps your business with long-term decision making, increases productivity and enables rapid development process.
MuleSoft for your API-led connectivity integration framework
With MuleSoft’s Anypoint platform, you can simplify the integration framework, and achieve connectivity in a seamless way. Time to modernize your integration strategy, transform digitally, and offload the maintenance burden of the added API layers behind- Only with MuleSoft.
Don’t know where to get started? We have a team of integration experts who can help you get this done! Bring all your integration issues and let us sort them out for you!
Affordable. Reliable. Simple. Easy – That’s MuleSoft for API- led connectivity
