Application programming interfaces, or APIs, are crucial to the ever-changing digital transformation landscape because they enable businesses to interact with their data and services promptly and effectively. Effective administration is therefore necessary to guarantee that these APIs operate as intended, remain secure, and offer the intended advantages. This is where Apigee, Google Cloud’s premier API management solution, is helpful.

What is Apigee?

Apigee is an excellent tool for businesses wanting to manage their APIs smoothly. It simplifies the process of creating, scaling, securing, and deploying APIs, making developers’ work easier. One of Apigee’s best features is its flexibility—it can manage both external APIs for third-party access and internal APIs for company use, making it suitable for companies of all sizes. Apigee also works well with security layers like Nginx, which adds a layer of authentication between Apigee and backend systems. This flexibility and security make Apigee a reliable and easy-to-use platform for managing APIs.

What is Gemini AI?

Gemini AI is an advanced artificial intelligence tool that enhances the management and functionality of APIs. Think of it as a smart assistant that helps automate tasks, answer questions, and improve security for API systems like Apigee. For example, if a developer needs help setting up an API, Gemini AI can guide them with instructions, formats, and even create new APIs based on simple language input. It can also answer common user questions or handle customer inquiries automatically, making the whole process faster and more efficient. Essentially, Gemini AI brings intelligence and automation to API management, helping businesses run their systems smoothly and securely.

Why Should Consumers Opt for Gemini AI with Apigee?

Consumers should choose Gemini AI with Apigee because it offers more innovative, faster, and more secure API management. It also brings security, efficiency, and ease of use to API management, making it a valuable choice for businesses that want to streamline their operations and ensure their APIs are fast, reliable, and secure. Here are some key benefits: Enhanced Security, Faster Development, and Time-Saving Automation.

Below is the flow diagram for Prospective Developments in APIGEE.

Greater Emphasis on API Security

• Zero Trust Security:  The Zero Trust security approach is founded on “never trust, always verify,” which states that no device or user should ever be presumed trustworthy, whether connected to the network or not. Each request for resource access under this architecture must undergo thorough verification.
• Zero Trust Models: APIs will increasingly adopt zero-trust security principles, ensuring no entity is trusted by default. The future of Zero-Trust in Apigee will likely focus on increasing the security and flexibility of API management through tighter integration with identity management, real-time monitoring, and advanced threat protection technologies.
• Enhanced Data Encryption: Future developments might include more substantial data encryption capabilities, both in transit and at rest, to protect sensitive information in compliance with Zero Trust principles.
  
  

Resiliency and Fault Tolerance

 The future of resiliency and fault tolerance in Apigee will likely involve advancements and innovations driven by evolving technological trends and user needs. Here are some key areas where we can expect Apigee to enhance its resiliency and fault tolerance capabilities.

• Automated Failover: Future iterations of Apigee will likely have improved automated failover features, guaranteeing that traffic is redirected as quickly as possible in case of delays or outages. More advanced failure detection and failover methods could be a part of this.
• Adaptive Traffic Routing: Future updates could include more dynamic and intelligent traffic management features. This might involve adaptive routing based on real-time performance metrics, enabling more responsive adjustments to traffic patterns and load distribution.
• Flexible API Gateway Configurations: Future enhancements could provide more flexibility in configuring API gateways to better handle different fault scenarios. This includes custom policies for fault tolerance, enhanced error handling, and more configurable redundancy options.

Gemini AI with Apigee

Gemini AI and Apigee’s integration has the potential to improve significantly API administration by enhancing its intelligence, security, and usability. Organizations can anticipate improved security, more effective operations, and better overall user and developer experience by utilizing cutting-edge AI technologies. This integration may open the door to future breakthroughs and capabilities as AI and API management technologies develop. If the API specifications that are currently available in API Hub do not satisfy your needs, you can utilize Gemini to create a new one by just stating your needs in basic English. Considerable time is saved in the cycles of development and assessment.

Gemini AI can inform you about the policy documentation in parallel while adding policies to the Apigee development. Gemini AI can guide you with the formats used in the policies. We can automate the query region like chatbots with Gemini AI. We may utilize Gemini AI to improve and get answers to questions about the APIs available on the Apigee portal.

If any integration is currently in use. We can use Gemini AI to accept inquiries from customers or clients and automate the most frequently asked responses. Additionally, Gemini AI can simply reply to customers until our professionals are active.

Overview

Apigee, Google Cloud’s API management platform, plays a key role in digital transformation by securely and flexibly connecting businesses with data and services. Future advancements focus on stronger security with a “Zero Trust” approach, improved resilience through automated failover and adaptive traffic routing, and enhanced flexibility in API gateway settings. Integration with Gemini AI will make Apigee smarter, enabling automated support, policy guidance, API creation, streamlining development, and improving customer service.

APIs, or application programming interfaces, are essential to the dynamic world of digital transformation because they allow companies to communicate quickly and efficiently with their data and services. Consequently, effective management is essential to ensure these APIs function correctly, stay safe, and provide the desired benefits. This is where Google Cloud’s top-tier API management product, Apigee, comes into play.

What is Apigee?

Apigee is a great platform for companies that want to manage their APIs effectively. It really simplifies the whole process of creating, growing, securing, and implementing APIs, which makes things a lot easier for developers. One thing that stands out about Apigee is its flexibility; it can handle both external APIs that third-party partners can access and internal APIs used within the company. This makes Apigee a great option for businesses of all sizes. Moreover, its versatility is a significant benefit for those looking to simplify their API management. It also integrates nicely with various security layers, like Nginx, which provides an important layer of authentication between Apigee and the backend. Because of this adaptability, Apigee enhances security and allows for smooth integration across different systems, making it a reliable choice for managing APIs.

Core Features of Apigee

1. API Design and Development

Primarily, Apigee offers a unique suite of tools for developing and designing APIs. You can define API endpoints, maintain API specifications, and create and modify API proxies by using the Open API standard. Consequently, it becomes easier to design functional and compliant APIs with industry standards. Furthermore, this capability streamlines the development process and ensures that the APIs meet regulatory requirements. Thus, developers can focus on innovation while maintaining a strong foundation of compliance and functionality. Below is a flow diagram related to API Design and Development with Apigee:

2. Security and Authentication

Any API management system must prioritize security, and Apigee leads the field in this regard. It provides security features such as OAuth 2.0, JWT (JSON Web Token) validation, API key validation, and IP validation. By limiting access to your APIs to authorized users, these capabilities help safeguard sensitive data from unwanted access.

3. Traffic Management

With capabilities like rate limitation, quota management, and traffic shaping, Apigee enables you to optimize and control API traffic. This helps proper usage and maintains consistent performance even under high traffic conditions.

4. Analytics and Monitoring

You can access analytics and monitoring capabilities with Apigee, which offers insights into API usage and performance. You can track response times, error rates, and request volumes, enabling you to make data-driven decisions and quickly address any issues that arise.

5. Developer Portal

Apigee includes a customizable developer portal where API users can browse documentation, test APIs, and get API keys. This portal builds a community around your APIs and improves the developer experience.

6. Versioning and Lifecycle Management

Keeping an API’s versions separate is essential to preserving backward compatibility and allowing it to change with time. Apigee offers lifecycle management and versioning solutions for APIs, facilitating a seamless upgrade or downgrade process.

7. Integration and Extensibility

Apigee supports integration with various third-party services and tools, including CI/CD pipelines, monitoring tools, and identity providers. Its extensibility through APIs and custom policies allows you to tailor the platform to meet your specific needs.

8. Debug Session

Moreover, Apigee offers a debug session feature that helps troubleshoot and resolve issues by providing a real-time view of API traffic and interactions. This feature is crucial for identifying and fixing problems and is essential during the development and testing phases. In addition, this feature helps ensure that any issues are identified early on; consequently, it enhances the overall quality of the final product.

9. Alerts:

Furthermore, you can easily set up alerts within Apigee to notify you of critical issues related to performance and security threats. It is crucial to understand that both types of threats affect system reliability and can lead to significant downtime; addressing them promptly is essential for maintaining optimal performance.

10. Product Onboarding for Different Clients

Apigee supports product onboarding, allowing you to manage and customize API access and resources for different clients. This feature is essential for handling diverse client needs and ensuring each client has the appropriate level of access.

11. Threat Protection

Apigee provides threat protection mechanisms to ensure that your APIs can handle concurrent requests efficiently without performance degradation. This feature helps in maintaining API stability under high load conditions.

12. Shared Flows

Apigee allows you to create and reuse shared flows, which are common sets of policies and configurations applied across multiple API proxies. This feature promotes consistency and reduces redundancy in API management.

Benefits of Using Apigee

1. Enhanced Security

In summary, Apigee’s comprehensive security features help protect your APIs from potential threats and ensure that only authorized users can access your services.

2. Improved Performance

Moreover, with features like traffic management and caching, Apigee helps optimize API performance, providing a better user experience while reducing the load on your backend systems.

3. Better Visibility

Apigee’s analytics and monitoring tools give valuable insights into API usage and performance, helping you identify trends, diagnose issues, and make informed decisions.

4. Streamlined API Management

Apigee’s unified platform simplifies the management of APIs, from design and development to deployment and monitoring, saving time and reducing complexity.

5. Scalability

Finally, Apigee is designed to handle APIs at scale, making it suitable for both small projects and large enterprise environments.

Getting Started with Apigee

To get started with Apigee, follow these steps:

1. Sign Up for Apigee

Visit the Google Cloud website and sign up for an Apigee account. Based on your needs, you can choose from different pricing plans.

2. Design Your API

Use Apigee’s tools to design your API, define endpoints, and set up API proxies.

3. Secure Your API

Implement security policies and authentication mechanisms to protect your API.

4. Deploy and Monitor

Deploy your API to Apigee and use the analytics and monitoring tools to track its performance.

5. Engage Developers

Set up your developer portal to provide documentation and resources for API consumers.

In a world where APIs are central to digital innovation and business operations, having a powerful API management platform like Apigee can make a significant difference. With its rich feature set and comprehensive tools, Apigee helps organizations design, secure, and manage APIs effectively, ensuring optimal performance and value. Whether you’re just starting with APIs or, conversely, looking to enhance your existing API management practices, Apigee offers a variety of capabilities. Furthermore, it provides the flexibility necessary to thrive in today’s highly competitive landscape.

In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, financial services organizations are increasingly relying on cutting-edge technologies to stay competitive and deliver exceptional services to their clients. Microsoft’s Azure Integration Services, a suite of tools designed to seamlessly connect applications, data, and processes, is emerging as a game-changer for the financial services industry.

This blog post delves into the myriad benefits of Azure Integration Services and highlights high-impact examples that demonstrate its transformative potential for financial services organizations.

The Benefits of Azure Integration Services

Enhanced Connectivity and Interoperability

Azure Integration Services offer a robust framework for connecting disparate systems, enabling financial organizations to integrate on-premises, cloud-based, and third-party applications seamlessly. This connectivity enhances interoperability, allowing for streamlined operations and improved data flow across various platforms.  Additionally, Azure offers best-in-class capabilities to support hybrid scenarios with stringent requirements for private networking & threat detection – all of which are critical in today’s cloud world.

Scalability and Flexibility

Financial organizations often face fluctuating demands and need a flexible infrastructure that can scale accordingly. Azure Integration Services provide the scalability required to handle varying workloads, ensuring businesses adapt quickly to changing market conditions without compromising performance.

Improved Security and Compliance

With stringent regulatory requirements in the financial sector, security and compliance are paramount. Azure Integration Services leverage Azure’s robust security features (including multi-factor authentication, encryption, role-based access control, and private networking) to ensure that data is protected and compliance standards are met.

Cost Efficiency

Financial organizations can reduce IT overhead costs by integrating existing systems and leveraging cloud-based services. Azure Integration Services minimize the need for extensive physical hardware and maintenance, resulting in significant cost savings.

Streamlined Business Processes

Automation is a key benefit of Azure Integration Services. By automating repetitive tasks and processes, financial organizations can increase efficiency, reduce errors, and allow employees to focus on more strategic activities that add value to the business.

High-Impact Examples in the Financial Services Industry

Real-Time Fraud Detection and Prevention

Fraud detection is critical in the financial industry. Azure Integration Services can connect various data sources and use machine learning models to analyze transactions in real-time. For example, a bank can integrate its transaction processing system with Azure Machine Learning to instantly identify and flag suspicious activities, reducing fraud risk.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Enhancement

Financial organizations can enhance their CRM systems by integrating them with Azure Logic Apps, Azure Functions, and Azure Service Bus. With Azure, organizations can integrate just as seamlessly with Microsoft technology (such as Dynamics) as it can with non-Microsoft technology (Salesforce).  This integration allows for real-time updates and data synchronization across customer touchpoints, providing a unified view of customer interactions. As a result, financial advisors can offer more personalized services and improve customer satisfaction.

Regulatory Reporting and Compliance Automation

Compliance reporting is often a resource-intensive process. Azure Integration Services can automate data collection and reporting from multiple sources, ensuring accuracy and timeliness. For instance, an investment firm can integrate its trading platforms with Azure Logic Apps to automate the generation and submission of compliance reports to regulatory bodies.  In addition, Azure provides security & compliance dashboards to ensure the environment itself remains secure and minimizes the threat of breaches & unauthorized access.

Seamless Payment Processing

Financial organizations can offer seamless and secure payment processing services by integrating payment gateways with Azure API Management. This integration ensures that payment data is transmitted securely and efficiently, enhancing the customer experience and reducing transaction times.  API Management benefits your products & customers as much as it benefits your development teams.  Implementing API Management provides full lifecycle support for your API’s, API discovery, and a developer portal to streamline both development and operational needs.

Enhanced Risk Management

Risk management is a critical aspect of financial services. Azure Integration Services can integrate risk assessment tools with core banking systems to provide real-time insights into potential risks. For example, a lending institution can use Azure Functions to analyze borrower data and assess credit risk more accurately, leading to better-informed lending decisions.

Conclusion

Azure Integration Services offers a powerful suite of capabilities that enable financial organizations to enhance connectivity, scalability, security, and efficiency. By leveraging these services, organizations can drive innovation, improve customer experiences, and maintain a competitive edge in the market. The high-impact examples highlighted in this post demonstrate the transformative potential of Azure Integration Services in the financial services industry, making it an indispensable asset for forward-thinking organizations.

By embracing Azure Integration Services, financial institutions can navigate the complexities of the digital era with confidence and agility, positioning themselves for sustained success and growth.

Contact us to learn more!

Learn more about our Financial services capabilities with our Financial Services Lookbook

Learn more about our Azure solutions & capabilities here.

As there is rapid growth in businesses going digital, the need to develop scalable and reliable functionalities to connect applications, Cloud environments, on-premises assets have grown. To resolve these complex scenarios, iPaaS seems to be a perfect solution.

For example, if a developer needs to connect and transfer huge data from an e-commerce platform to a CRM system, writing custom code to handle data transfer would be tedious. Instead, the developer can simply consume APIs deployed to iPaaS, significantly reducing development time and effort.

But What Exactly is iPaaS?

Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) is a cloud-based solution that makes integrating different applications, data sources and systems easier. It typically provides built-in connectors, reusable components, and tools for designing, executing, and monitoring integrations. This helps businesses enhance operational efficiency, reduce manual efforts, and quickly adapt to changing technology landscapes.

Today, we will talk about one of the iPaaS solutions which stands as a visionary in the Gartner’s magic quadrant of 2023 i.e. SnapLogic.

What is SnapLogic?

SnapLogic is an iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service) tool, that allows organization to connect various applications, data sources, and APIs to facilitate data integration, automation, and workflows.

It provides a visual interface for designing integration pipelines, making it easier for both technical and non-technical users to create and manage data integrations. SnapLogic supports hybrid cloud and on-premises deployment and is used for tasks such as data migration, ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) processes and application integration.

Getting Started with the Basics of SnapLogic

To kick-start your journey, spend 5-10 minutes for setup. Here are the steps to quickly setup your training environment.

1. Sign Up for SnapLogic: You must sign up for an account. For training and better hands-on experience, SnapLogic provides a training account for 4 weeks. You can start with the training account to explore its features. Here is the link to get the training account: SnapLogic User Login.
2. Access SnapLogic designer: SnapLogic designer is the heart of its integration capabilities. Once you have signed up, you can access it from your account.
3. Course suitable for beginners: Click this link to enroll in the “SnapLogic Certified Enterprise Automation Professional” entry-level course to quickly get up to speed on SnapLogic.

Features of SnapLogic

SnapLogic is an integration platform that makes connecting different data sources and applications easier. Some key features include:

1. Multi-cloud Integration: Supports integration across various cloud platforms.
2. Low-Code Approach: Reduces the requirement for advanced coding knowledge.
3. API Management: Helps manage APIs and create custom APIs between different applications.
4. Real-time Integration: Supports real-time data integration.

Overview of Use Case

Done with sign-up and setup! Lessons that are theoretical are never easy to learn until you continue to do hands-on in parallel. Let’s look at a practical use case to simplify learning.

The customer must automatically insert the employee records from the Excel file in a shared directory to the salesforce CRM end system.

How Can We Achieve This Using SnapLogic?

SnapLogic provides pre-built snaps, such as file reader, CSV parser, mapper, salesforce create, and many more.

For achieving the below use case, we need to add the File Reader Snap to fetch the csv file, to parse the data use the CSV Parser, Mapper Snap to transform the data, and lastly, Salesforce Create to insert the data into it.

Creating the pipeline

1. Upload your CSV file to the SnapLogic file system as we need to read the csv file.
2. Creating a pipeline is the first step in building an integration. You can click the “+” sign on the top of the middle canvas as follows: Then fill the pipeline name and parent project then click “Save”.
3. Add and configure the file reader snap: For the file field you uploaded in step 1. Because you are accessing the file system, no authentication information is needed.
4. Add a CSV parser snap; you will use the default configuration.
5. Add the Mapper: It transforms the incoming data using specific mapping and produces new output data.
6. Salesforce Create: It creates the records into a Salesforce account object using the Rest API. 
7. After saving, SnapLogic will automatically validate changes; you can click on the green document icon to view what your data looks like.
8. Test the pipeline: After the build is done, we can test the pipeline now. To do that, click on the “play” icon in the pipeline menu and wait for the pipeline to finish executing. Notice how the color of the snaps turns yellow while executing, indicating they are currently running.
9. Validate the Results: Once the execution finishes, the pipeline turns dark green. If there’s any exception, the failing snap turns red.
10. Results: Login to the salesforce account > accounts > Click on the recently viewed accounts. You will be able to see the records that were fetched from the Employee_Data.csv file.

Conclusion

Congratulations on completing your first SnapLogic integration! In this blog, we went through the basics of iPaaS and SnapLogic. We also went through a practical use case to gain confidence and better understand. Our journey in SnapLogic has just started, and we’ll be exploring more in the future to expand on the knowledge we accumulated in this article.

Perficient and SnapLogic

At Perficient, we develop scalable and robust integrations within the SnapLogic Platform. With our expertise in SnapLogic, we resolve customers’ complex business problems, which helps them grow their business efficiently.

Contact us today to explore more options for elevating your business.

Due to COVID-19, it is critical for healthcare providers to have real-time, unified access to data. With the pandemic pushing this industry to its limits, the need for data interoperability is higher than ever. In order to adapt to these conditions, healthcare organizations need easy-to-use technology to support the exchange of healthcare information.

To fill this need, Google recently announced the widespread availability of their Cloud Healthcare API. This API is designed to facilitate the intake and management of healthcare data from various inputs and systems. It will then apply analytics and real-time machine learning to better understand that data. The Cloud Healthcare API gives healthcare providers a way to access data with web-friendly endpoints and health plans that are easily deployed in the cloud. This allows healthcare providers to scale and support patient access to their data.

Leading up to its recent announcement, Google partnered with Mayo Clinic using the API to store and enable interoperability of its clinical data. Through this partnership, Mayo Clinic gained a technology that works quickly and securely to help them better serve its patients.

Why Perficient

We are a Google certified partner with more than 20 years of cross-industry experience including the healthcare industry. We’ve served more than 40 of the world’s largest public healthcare companies and have more than 500 health sciences consultants on our team. Our industry solutions include strategic and advisory services, enterprise data and analytics, digital health, and more.

READY TO GROW YOUR CAREER?

Perficient continually looks for ways to champion and challenge our workforce, encourage personal and professional growth, and celebrating our people-oriented culture. Work on interesting projects for some of the world’s most recognizable clients and enjoy life while doing so.

Learn more about what it’s like to work at Perficient at our Careers page. See open jobs or join our community for career tips, job openings, company updates, and more!

Go inside Life at Perficient and connect with us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Application program interfaces (APIs) have the potential to transform the way you conduct business. They can reduce operational costs and friction, drastically reduce time to market for IT, enable new digital business models, and revolutionize your customer’s journey. We partner with Google and Apigee, a leader in full lifecycle API management software, to provide solutions that allow you to gain control and visibility into the APIs that connect applications and data across the enterprise.

To fully embrace the power of APIs with Apigee, here are some best practices to keep in mind:

1. Enforce consistent security and governance

When developers deploy microservices in the public cloud without API security standards or consistent global policies, they expose the business to potential security breaches. Companies must assume a zero-trust environment. Apigee enables enterprises to implement security and governance policies across all their APIs.

2. Drive end-to-end visibility

Without usage and performance data about your microservices and cloud workloads, it’s difficult to understand the extent to which these services are reused, or potential performance concerns. Especially in larger organizations or around APIs for external use, this can create a management challenge.

API platforms provide analytics and reporting capabilities to measure API usage, developer and partner engagement, microservices adoption, and traffic composition. Organizations use API analytics to monitor API performance by analyzing total traffic, throughput, latency, and errors.

3. Make services easily discoverable and reusable

As organizations employ multiple microservices stacks, clouds, and PaaS environments, it can be difficult for teams to discover and reuse microservices and APIs. Internal and external app developers use developer portals to discover services, register to use APIs, access interactive and community documentation, register their apps, and view data about their app usage on a dashboard.

4. Co-exist with microservices orchestration frameworks

App teams are adopting a variety of microservices orchestration tools such as Kubernetes. Although there is some overlap in the gateway functionality between the microservices stack and API management, most organizations combine their API management with their microservices and PaaS gateway/routers to ensure visibility across the organization.

5. Don’t adopt cloud-specific gateways

All public cloud providers offer their own captive API gateways that provide core functions like traffic management, simple meditation, and caching. For most businesses, cloud-specific gateways are too limited as they’re unable to unify data across a multi-cloud environment. Instead of using one specific gateway, businesses have the power to manage all APIs, no matter what cloud they live in.

Why Perficient

We partner with Apigee to complement and extend your API management strategy and implementation expertise. Our team of certified experts provides end-to-end solutions for enterprise-scale API management wherever you are in your digital transformation journey.

• Customer is looking to build or has a platform or ecosystem for partners or developers
• The customer wants to unlock new revenue
• A customer has Digital Transformation or Modernization Initiatives
• Modernize legacy applications to innovate faster, ensure business continuity
• Front-end optimization needs (Retail, dynamic pricing)

•  Boomi is a unified, cloud-native, and purpose-built iPaaS catering to hybrid integration requirements of both large and medium-sized enterprises and of different user personas through integration, data quality, governance, B2B integration, and low code app deployments.
• Boomi provides for the exposure of Integration APIs for all your backend systems. Apigee then overlays an isolation layer that homogenizes the API look, feel, and operations, and offloads common functions (security, mediation, traffic control, etc.), to the Experience APIs that are published with documentation to developers, both internal and external.

• By combining both Apigee API Management and Boomi iPaaS capabilities, we optimize the software development lifecycle (SDLC) and provide customers with elegant, low-code, rapidly deployed, and cost-effective integrated solutions.
• The two components “fit together” to achieve a unified platform offering.
• Provide full Connectivity, Digital Transformation, Legacy Modernization, and Innovation with the combined features of the Boomi iPaaS and Apigee APIM platforms.
• With Apigee being a leader in APIM and Boomi in the iPasS space, they can offer customers a unified platform offering with the highest quality… lowest cost in the shortest time.

Over the last few years, API management platforms have seen a lot of change and maturation. As market demands continue to evolve, vendors have evolved as well, albeit at their own pace. Gartner published a report assessing various API management vendors and their ability to facilitate API life cycle management. As stated in the Gartner report, today’s full life cycle API management involves:

• The planning, design, implementation, testing, publication, operation, consumption, maintenance, versioning and retirement of APIs
• Delivery of a developer portal through which to target, market to and govern communities of developers who embed APIs
• Runtime management
• Estimation of APIs’ value
• The use of analytics to understand patterns of API usage

Using these criteria as well as the ability to execute and completeness of vision, Apigee established itself as a leader in API vendors in the Gartner report. Over the past year, Apigee has added new integration features such as Apigee Extensions to continue to adapt to the ever-changing market needs.

Apigee Edge, the core Apigee API management platform, is available both on-premises and in the cloud as well as for hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Google Cloud also offers Apigee Compass, a self-assessment tool for digital strategy maturity. This ability to support users through their digital transformation journey is a major differentiator among API vendors for Apigee. As listed in the report, users also noted Apigee Edge offers a key benefit of ease of use.

Why Perficient

Perficient is partnered with Apigee to complement and extend your API management strategy and implementation expertise. Our team of certified experts provides end-to-end solutions for enterprise-scale API management wherever you are in your digital transformation journey. For more information on our Apigee partnership, visit our Google partner page.

Apigee Edge is the flagship API management product in Apigee’s intelligent API platform. It provides a solution that addresses the entire digital value chain from the backend systems of record through to the customer who interacts with an app or digital experience delivered by an API-powered mobile app or a connected device.

Key capabilities of Apigee Edge API Management:

Security
API management solutions secure and mediate the traffic between a company’s APIs and the developers, customers, partners, and employees who use those APIs. Apigee Edge provides configurable policies for security such as OAuth, API key verification, XML/JSON threat protection, JWT, Access control, and SAML assertions.
Protocol transformation
Protocol transformations are needed in order to reuse existing systems or integrate with legacy systems. Edge supports the transformation of existing backend services to APIs that let API developers configure rather than code their solutions. Configurable policies include SOAP to REST, XML to JSON, JSON to XML, and XSL Transformation.
Versioning
Versioning is supported at multiple levels. Backend service versions can be “hidden” behind the API facade. All artifacts (policies and configurations) are stored in XML and can be placed into versioning systems.
Traffic Management
Configurable policies that enable an API provider to augment its API with features to control and shape traffic without requiring it to write any code or to modify any backend services.

• Caching-Improve API and app performance by storing data from backend resources in a cache, from where they can be retrieved quickly.
• Quotas and rate limits– Limit the number of connections apps can make via the API to the backend.
• Spike Arrest– Protect backend systems against severe traffic spikes and denial-of service attacks.

Mediation
Edge mediation supports message transformation, parsing and validation, as well as raise faults and alerts.
Edge can transform several formats including: XML to/from JSON, XML to/from XML, XML to/from PLIST, SOAP to/from REST, RSS to REST, and RSS to/from ATOM.
Edge supports all of the following industry standards – HTTP, HTTPS, REST, SOAP 1.1/1.2, WSDL 1.0/2.0, XML (POX), XSD, XPATH, XQuery, REST, WADL, JSON, and JMS.
Support for Java, JavaScript, Node.js, and Python
Apigee Edge supports Java,JavaScript,Node.js and Python, which extend the programmability of the API management solution for developers who prefer coding over configuration. Using callout policies, code written using these standard languages executes as part of the request pipeline like any out-of-the-box policy.
Developer portal
Enterprises deploy the portal to provide a community for developers with the resources necessary to learn about the enterprise’s APIs, become a registered developer, and collaborate with peers and with the enterprise. It includes a framework for publishing interactive SmartDocs API documentation and a Smart Key Management application for key generation and secure registration and onboarding of developers, whether internal, partner, or external.
Monetization
Apigee Edge Monetization provides the following capabilities.

• Rate plans
• Reporting and billing
• Setting limits
• Monetization-related content

Deployments
Apigee Edge delivers several capabilities that ensure the highest levels of availability and distribution. The Apigee platform is multi-tenant in both on-premises and in the cloud. A multi-tenant management infrastructure means that updates and fixes can be rolled out quickly and seamlessly to all tenants, but Java code and custom scripts are isolated in separate nodes.
Analytics
Edge Analytics Services provides several visualization tools, including the dashboard (which gives an overall view of your entire API program), custom reports (to select, combine, filter, and drill down into specific API metrics), GeoMap (which tracks traffic patterns, error patterns, and quality of service across geographies), and tools that allow you to plot trends in traffic, response time, and other metrics for an API’s individual resources.

Thrilling our clients with innovation and impact – it’s not just rhetoric. This belief is instrumental for our clients’ success. In 2018 we introduced our Chief Strategists, who provide vision and leadership to help our clients remain competitive. Get to know each of our strategists as they share their unique insights on their areas of expertise.

Big data has significantly impacted today’s leading enterprises “as it helps detect patterns, consumer trends, and enhance decision making.” In fact, the big data and analytics market is estimated to reach $49 billion this year with a CAGR of 11 percent.

However, big data is often too broad and complex for analysis by traditional processing application software. For businesses to get the most out of their data, they must deploy a strategy that transforms their data management and analytics practices.

We recently spoke with Bill Busch, Big Data Chief Strategist, to learn more about creating value with big data and developing a data strategy to achieve meaningful results.

What does your role as a Chief Strategist entail?

Bill Busch: Since joining Perficient, I have acted as an evangelist for big data, machine analytics, resource management, and the business development of those functions. My new role as Chief Strategist is a continuation of those efforts. This role allows me to be a resource for our clients and help them gain value from strategically using their data.

What do you hope to accomplish as a Chief Strategist?

BB: I want to help clients understand how to best use their own data with AI, machine learning, analytics, and cloud to inform their business decisions. To get there, business leaders must transform data collection platforms in a way that addresses the typical mistakes or challenges experienced.

Many of our implementations involve several areas of expertise, which provides an opportunity to collaborate with other Chief Strategists, whether they’re focused in a particular industry or a specific technology.

Collectively, we help clients change processes and train teams to approach their duties differently. By addressing technology, processes, and people, they can take full advantage of [data collection] platforms’ speed and still maintain the quality and visibility of data.

“The breadth and depth of the Chief Strategists’ expertise enables the creation of comprehensive solutions that resolve our clients’ most critical issues.”

Chief Strategists in Action

A recent example of our collaboration involved developing a unified data view using APIs. Typically, application data and API management were separated when companies sought to integrate data. Now, these two ecosystems are merging into one. This presents a challenge to create a single solution that enables application integration and the consolidation of different data sources. To conquer this challenge, we partnered with Erich Roch, Chief Strategist for IT Modernization and Integration, to create comprehensive solutions for our clients.

Strategically Speaking

Why does strategy matter for big data?

BB: Big data relies on a series of systems or platforms to gain meaningful insights, such as cloud data warehousing or cloud data lakes. Developing a strategy [around people and processes working with data] is what ultimately helps businesses align decision making and gain value from their data.

Why is it important for businesses to be strategic with their data?

BB: Data is the heartbeat of any modern organization. Having information readily available to make decisions doesn’t happen quickly or seamlessly. The most productive strategy to achieve speed-to-market value requires funneling your information into a database to generate high-level insights.

Data strategy also doesn’t have to end with the executive level. Businesses enable other departments for success when they make data accessible for broader analytics by following best practices, establishing predefined processes, and creating a strategy to integrate the data.

How does big data affect the ability to remain competitive?

BB: If you don’t have a data strategy in place, then you’re operating reactively and setting up your [business] for displacement. It’s easy for businesses to rely on low-quality data that is readily available to influence their decisions. However, the issue with that approach is the lack of depth of that information. Your enterprise may have the best AI in the world, but those AI models aren’t meaningful if you lack robust data for the technology to analyze.

To shift from a reactive to proactive stance, you should invest in a strategy and a data management infrastructure to manage the information. Investing in both yields deeper insights than surface-level information, provides greater context with existing knowledge, and identifies emerging trends to reveal unknown information.

When helping clients to create a strategy, we identify a scalable, analytical use case that could benefit from a data warehouse. Then, we help our clients establish a process with dedicated people and resources to assess existing data and develop ideas about the data they want to collect. From there, we create a road map to bridge the gap, so our clients are well-positioned to make strategic decisions relatively quickly.

Think Like a Chief Strategist

What trend(s) have you observed that influence how businesses manage big data?

BB: The open-source approach to data processing is new. Companies previously used on-premise data lakes for their processing, and then the trend shifted to cloud-driven data lakes. Now, we’re migrating data away from mainframes and high-dollar, appliance-based platforms to open source, cloud-based platforms.

For example, we’re currently working with a major healthcare payer to migrate its costly claims processing from a data lake mainframe to an open source, cloud-based platform. This project will enable our client to do more with its data – at a faster pace – while reducing costs. I think many companies realize the possibilities and are considering this model and similar solutions. It’s a sign of the times and underscores the need for digital transformation.

However, if your organization isn’t quite ready for data processing in the cloud, data lakes are a great intermediate step, allowing you to consolidate your data for the analytical use case. Using a cost-effective enterprise data warehouse (EDW), you can take advantage of the data lake and use the data for operational processing.

While I’m not saying that we’re moving away from data lakes, I think we’re seeing a need to build out the reliance of data lakes and enable more than one use case. By doing so, we’re architecturally enabling multiple areas of a business to take advantage of data that suits its goals or objectives.

When creating a big data strategy with clients, what are the top considerations?

BB: At the start of any client engagement, we identify the business drivers for a data strategy. Whether the use case is analytical or scientific, the supporting data architecture and data strategy must have some perspective to the [business] need. We also ensure the business need isn’t too tactical so future iterations aren’t limited.

Organizational culture is another major consideration for developing a big data strategy. Enabling self-service within the finance industry is a prime example. Industry regulations impact the level of self-service capabilities that a firm can offer. These limitations can greatly influence a financial organization’s culture, and its reception of a data-focused strategy.

Contrast this scenario to the life sciences industry that’s comprised of people who are hard-wired to interact with data in a more analytical way. Regardless of the industry or the culture, incorporating an organizational change management component helps ease the transition.

Using these insights, I try to establish a vision with clients. Many issues that businesses generally encounter when creating a data strategy and data lake platform isn’t related to the technology. Instead, it’s overcoming the mindset of the people involved. If you start with a universal outlook, develop agile concepts, and deploy lean processes, a data strategy can inform much analysis upfront. Then, the strategy establishes a data pipeline to begin moving information from the source to its destination in a relatively short timeframe.

Learn more about each of our Chief Strategists by following this series. 

Analyzing big data, automating business-critical processes, and migrating to the cloud are just a few of the manual tasks that enterprises automate with technology solutions. As business needs change, it is essential to continue to leverage technology to meet new challenges and improve business processes. Discover current trends in digital transformation enablers like API management, containers, process automation, and DevOps, and how you can utilize these solutions for your company’s digital transformation. 

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning:
AI and predictive analytics help draw insights from large amounts of data, and machine learning helps enterprises adapt to new situations and provides tools like natural language processing. Better data means stronger insights and better-informed decision making. Together, these tools help reduce hours of manual labor and allow your teams to focus on higher-priority tasks. 

Automation:
Integrating tools from different phases of the DevOps cycle allows teams to leverage tools from other teams. This improves collaboration among teams and allows for faster and more accurate deployment and releases. 

Blockchain:
Blockchain networks ensure the transparency of the transactions that take place outside of your internal systems. For example, blockchain ensures the authenticity of information that flows from one company to another, creating a peer-to-peer BPM system. This new system could create a more efficient value-added chain and allow for more collaboration.

Internet of Things (IoT):
IoT is driving change by providing the data needed to increase efficiencies and decrease costs. For example, a product’s sensor detects that its temperature is beyond the normal range and sends an alert to an engineer. The system automatically shuts the product off and runs a diagnostic; depending on the fix, the engineer might be able to fix the problem remotely. A previously manual fix is now fully automated, saving the enterprise time and money. 

Microservices:
Microservices are small pieces of functionality that are made available as a service. Since they’re independent building blocks, they make applications easier to create, test, and understand. This means that multiple DevOps teams can build and deploy microservices at the same time and in multiple environments, creating new levels of development and flexibility.

Multi-cloud / hybrid cloud:
Enterprises know that different cloud environments have different strengths, and the cost of moving to the cloud can be a barrier. APIs allow enterprises to seamlessly move their resources from one location to another without affecting the application. This also means that enterprises can easily deploy, manage, and integrate their legacy systems any number of cloud environments. 

Robotic process automation (RPA):
RPA allows enterprises to divide labor. Humans do the tasks best suited to their skills, and computers are beginning to do the tasks previously done by humans. Robots are eliminating repetitive processes that are prone to human error. Automation frees up humans to perform more complex activities and introduces efficiency into formerly manual processes. 

Shift from continuous integration (CI) pipelines to DevOps assembly lines:
CI pipelines show your app from source control to production, but DevOps is moving more toward continuous development (CD). Enterprises are investing their time and effort into understanding more about automating their complete software development process and are moving to DevOps assembly lines. 

Use analytics to drive process action: 
BPM generates large amounts of data that can be used to fine-tune processes and influence other processes. BPM software that includes reporting capabilities allows process data to continue to inform and drive improvements.

Interested in taking the next step in your company’s digital transformation? Download our e-book to learn how to optimize your processes and set yourself up for future success. 

According to Gartner, “It is impossible to provide the platform for any digital strategy and run an effective API program to benefit from the API economy, without full life cycle API management.”

Digital platforms such as mobility and IoT require businesses to establish an API platform strategy that supports new computing models such as hybrid cloud and SaaS. API management solutions are now available in the cloud as a service and offer significant cost savings and deployment flexibility over older on-premises, API Gateway appliances.

When considering an API management platform, look to the key product features to build a business case. API management justification often includes increasing the velocity of the business transformation and the financial justification of legacy renewal cost versus the subscription cost of a cloud-based solution.

Consider also the following typical added capabilities from migrating from an API Gateway to API Management in the cloud:

• Provides a secure API gateway for developers, partners and mobile devices to applications and data
• Manages an internal API program providing a centralized, collaborative environment to catalog and control reusable integration assets and APIs
• Creates an ecosystem of innovation by onboarding APIs and developers into a developer portal

A modern cloud-based API management architecture has the following benefits:

• Faster innovation and time-to-value due to improved developer productivity with self-service access to use and publish APIs
• Lighter weight architecture that can be accessed across many platforms including cloud, mobile and IoT
• Lower cost and risk with the subscription cost typically less than the renewal cost of proprietary software and appliances

Take a look at the graphic below to see a typical API Gateway Migration timeline:

Perficient has been in the integration space for over 15 years and has partnerships with all of leading players.  Contact our team to get details on our Accelerated Migration package.