Rennay Dorasamy - API Marketplace Engineering: Design, Build, and Run a Platform for External Developers

This Apress imprint is published by the registered company APress Media, LLC part of Springer Nature.

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An API Marketplace is a key enabler for any organization with a goal of establishing a platform business. Due to its purpose as a digital channel between third-party developers and the enterprise, it is a delicate balancing act. Allowing access to internal services and capability with fine-grained control. Innovative products and solutions subject to organizational governance. Blindingly fast agile delivery in accordance with enterprise standards of quality. Liberation and democratization of customer data with consent. Planet-scale architectures on cutting-edge technology with enterprise grade reliability.

The basic premise of an API Marketplace is openness. Continuing in this spirit, the intention of this book is to document the journey our implementation has been on, for many years now to share our experience, learnings, pitfalls, and solutions with Engineering teams that are about to set out, or that may already be on a similar quest. The approaches and solutions discussed have evolved over time and are in a continual state of optimization. It is my sincere hope that it will accelerate other implementations and further enhancements of those platforms will also be shared to catalyze adoption of the practice.

Primarily intended for a technical audience, this book provides a view of an API Marketplace from different perspectives. As a point of departure, I identify the vision and goal of an API Marketplace essentially the problem it solves (why?), the approach (how?), and the roles needed (who?). I then take a detailed look at the global wave of regulation sweeping over the Financial Services industry, which is also likely to occur in other sectors such as Telecommunications and Health. The purpose is to understand the drivers for regulation and various responses from different territories to help you define the identity and roadmap of your platform.

A new digital channel brings a new audience, and in my chapter on Consumption, I discuss strategies to help both business and technical users understand and access the platform. In the chapter on Monetization, I discuss the nucleus of our implementation the API Marketplace flywheel, as we call it which has afforded our implementation self-sustainability. I also discuss the various technical elements in detail which are needed to support various billing approaches some established, some evolutionary, some revolutionary.

Building an API Marketplace requires a change of mindset regarding Platform Architecture, API Design, and Delivery, and in these chapters, we dive into the detail of our approach both past and present. A Sandbox environment is a critical element of any Marketplace implementation, and I propose strategies to handle various types of scenarios and consumers. Possibly the most demanding, but also the most exciting and dynamic, stage of an API product in its lifecycle is in an operational context. I provide an honest account of our experience, both good and bad, enablers, and practices to provide enterprise-level support for our implementation.