API Education Series: Understanding the Key Differences Between API Management and API Integration

February 3, 2020

It is no secret that API is a big word. Every day we hear about the API economy, the business value it can create, and how it can enable collaboration between businesses, partners, vendors, and organizations. All of it is true… The API economy can create significant value and new opportunities for businesses by unlocking data and functionality across business systems and applications, beyond the boundaries of organizations and countries.

With the buzz around the API economy, there is also confusion around APIs, API Management, API integration, and other API-related concepts. In this article, we will demystify the role of API Management and how it differs from API Integration.

Often, businesses looking to implement an API strategy and be part of the API economy state their need with something like the following:

"As part of the digital transformation, we are seeking an API Management Tool that will act as the integration platform between our public-facing systems like the eCommerce platform and internal Enterprise Systems like Salesforce CRM, ServiceNow for Service Management and other home-grown systems."

The above example is a valuable need and can create better customer satisfaction, reduce costs, improve product delivery, and even create new opportunities to bring better products or services to market. However, when trying to find an API Management tool, customers often confuse what an API Management tool will do and what belongs to an API Integration or an iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service) platform. Let’s break it down and start with the basics of the acronyms and their functional roles:

API or Application Programming Interface is the signature of the data interchange mechanism or the contract offered by an application to expose its data and functionality to the rest of the world. There are many formats in which APIs may be implemented, with REST or Webservices being the most common. However, other mechanisms like file, messages, and EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) are also acceptable APIs.

API Management Platforms provide capabilities to manage available APIs and the API Gateway capabilities of applying policies like security, mediation, routing, and access controls in general. API Management Portals allow administrators to define policies and controls on the APIs. These platforms also provide API Developer Portals for API users and developers to access the API catalog and the documentation.

API Integration Platforms or an iPaaS, on the other hand, allow building complex workflows that use APIs from multiple applications and platforms to enable business processes. The API Integration Platform thus allows you to create new APIs that provide higher-value functionality using data and functionality from more than one application or database. These platforms consume available APIs and often provide new, higher-value APIs by aggregation.

Now going back to the use case or the problem statement, the customer will need an API Management Platform to expose the APIs to the outside world and to manage and apply policies, access control, and security. They will also need an API Integration Platform to build workflows using internal systems like Salesforce and ServiceNow and expose these to the outside world or eCommerce platforms of their own or those of their partners.

A similar use case or a customer requirement could be:

"We need an API Management platform for API based integration between web, partner systems, our salesforce.com, databases on Azure and internal home-grown applications."

Similar to the first use case, you will need both an API Management platform and an API Integration platform (iPaaS, ESB, or an integration middleware) to meet your needs in the best possible way. As in any evolving market, many iPaaS vendors now provide some API Gateway capabilities like the application of policies and controls. However, when making a choice, it might be worth going for the best vendors for each of the API Management and API integration or iPaaS so that you reduce risk and vendor lock-in, while still getting the best features and capabilities in each category.

In the next article in this series, we will understand what specific functions each of the two platforms perform and how API Management and API Integration or iPaaS work together to meet your use cases. Stay tuned…

Want to learn more? Reach out to me or one of the API experts at RoboMQ.

RoboMQ is not affiliated, associated, authorized, endorsed by, or in any way officially connected with any of HR systems that it provides integration with and are mentioned in this post. All product and company names are the registered trademarks of their original owners.

Bramh Gupta

Bramh Gupta is the founder and CEO of RoboMQ. He has a background in large scale real-time manufacturing systems, telecommunications and design and architecture of highly scalable and resilient enterprise systems. He is passionate about real-time integration and the value that it brings to business operations and critical decision making.

Bramh holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Business and Industrial Engineering degree from the National Institute of Technology, Jamshedpur. Bramh combines his business insights and architectural skills to design and create highly scalable, integration platforms and tools that are needed to power the API economy.