Centralized management of enterprise APIs

Development of an Azure API Management Architecture

Through the use of Azure API Management, we have created a solution for the centralized management of its APIs complete with:

• Authentication Management
• Monitoring
• Definition of roles and access to the various APIs
• Publication of endpoints starting from APIs developed on different technologies
• Controlled management of the publishing process
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In an API-first model, where it is essential to connect different systems, it is necessary to define a central point in which to manage data exposure.

A common way to manage enterprise APIs

The customer's request was very specific: Put order to the myriad of web services, services and APIs in place within the company. These were resources in use and critical for the functioning of automation processes, but they were implemented with the most disparate technologies and authentication methods.

The challenge was to develop a Azure API Management Architecture that would allow all services to be managed together in terms of security, monitoring, deployment and updating.

Everything had to be implemented through an intuitive and simple to use tool.

Azure API Management

Our experts have made the most of the features offered by Azure API Management, the application endpoint management service present in the Microsoft cloud platform.

The package was then completed with a automated management of API releases through ARM templates (Azure Resource Manager) and automatic resource installation pipeline through Azure DevOps, which offered the customer a ready-to-use mechanism for recovering the entire Azure resource infrastructure.

The benefit for the customer

Thanks to the new Azure API Management Architecture, the customer was able to benefit from a single platform where users can:

• manage all APIs for automation of their internal or external processes:
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• have a unified authentication mechanism for any type of web service or API;
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• have full autonomy to manage versioning of the APIs and the related test;
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• monitor API usage;
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• manage user recognition through the Office 365 business account;
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• have a controlled API publishing mechanism.

Achieved results

The Azure API Management Architecture developed by us has brought the customer a solution that has significantly improved the use and management of application endpoints within the company.

The main result was the centralization of security management for access to the various APIs that has been implemented using Azure AD as an identity provider for authentication both in application mode and in delegated mode, thus exploiting the identity of the current user.

The system now has more than 120 different endpoints in use that offer data to various internal and external applications at the perimeter defined by the corporate network, with an average number of more than 50k calls per minute.