By Darshan Shivashankar, founder of Itorix Inc and its product Apiwiz

Did you know that more than half of customers cease buying from a company if a competitor provides a better experience? And it's now nearly impossible to serve customers efficiently without leveraging the power of application programming interfaces (APIs). 

An API allows applications internally and externally to securely and quickly exchange data. APIs provide alternate channels through which customers can have the experience they want, when they want it - all at their fingertips. 

Therefore, to stay competitive, smaller businesses are investing in a top-down API strategy to reduce time to market while offering a high-quality customer experience. Small businesses tend to have domain units - from recruiting to tracking shipments, for example - with their own end-to-end staff with a shared central IT team. There is never one homogenous system that is fit for the whole organization, and governing APIs across hybrid clouds and different third-party solutions is becoming ever more tricky.

Small businesses are also making the mistake of working with multiple API vendors, which slows enterprises down, independent of the size. So, what are the solutions? 

Pulling API management and Service Mesh together

To keep up with digitization, businesses are leveraging cloud-native technologies and rewriting applications to be based on microservices for better manageability and scalability. 

Therefore, together, API gateways, providing the business logic for outside-facing traffic, and Service Mesh, that excels at handling intercommunication between microservices, are very relevant for both small and mid-size enterprises (SME) going through a digital transformation. 

To demystify these concepts, an API Gateway or management platform deals with north-south traffic between clients and a business' back-end services. For example, suppose a mobile app needs access to an application; the APIs provide the authentication and authorization for consumers, and everything is logged for visibility in an organizational database. Service Mesh manages east-west traffic or service-to-service communication within a distributed software system and data center. 

Ultimately, both API Gateway and Service Mesh are currently needed for API useability and discoverability. However, the cost and skills shortage is currently hindering this from happening,  unless they are managed through a unified platform.

Lack of collaboration? Low code is the answer

A Forbes article stated that IT departments must collaborate with business leaders. Marshall Van Alstyne, Boston University professor and research associate at the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, said: "All too frequently, technology is viewed as mere infrastructure left to a few priests to manage." Businesses indeed make this mistake, and technology always has dramatic implications for organizations' strategies. 

An API management platform with low-code techniques and automation could help small businesses centralize their operations and encourage accountability across the team. This is because these DevSecOps platforms bring in the aspect of a centralized definition of best practices and processes but decentralized enforcement to reduce blind spots and common mistakes while giving freedom for innovation. 

Leadership teams often neglect the idea of collaborative governance - but you have to motivate people to take responsibility throughout the entire IT lifecycle in today's digitized landscape. 

That's why a local platform with pre-built templates and custom themes would ensure you don't have potential loopholes in your services. Plus, you'll increase developer productivity while ensuring adherence to APIs or Service Mesh development guidelines. 

Teams should also be able to continuously collect feedback to improve features and fix issues that may not have been discovered during testing: Automation helps reduce the time from detection to resolution.

Rising security threats: API management platforms to the rescue

There is a general lack of API security awareness, and traditional IT security measures aren't enough. In fact, for hackers, APIs are the low-hanging fruit, and API attacks are on the rise. Whether you are a small or large business, you are still accountable for security breaches. But with small businesses, their ability to find issues before things go south often comes too late. According to Accenture, 43% percent of cyberattacks are aimed at small businesses, but only 14% are prepared to defend themselves. 

Google Cloud's State of the API Economy 2021 report stated that increased investment in security and governance is a top priority for developers and businesses. 

So, what are the API management security capabilities that small businesses should be searching for before investing in one? You should be able to track and alert API changes quickly, diagnose problems in live APIs, iterate behaviors, and analyze API performance. Also, endeavor to find a management platform that helps you build a design-first API development culture. This will reduce testing cycle dependencies to avoid mistakes in the future.  

It is essential to have a platform to easily manage internal and external APIs, enforce security, control API consumption, and expedite API discovery.

It's time to monetize

Often, small businesses consume API services from outside to avoid the hassle of building their own. But a transformation to building APIs would particularly benefit SMEs that struggle to reach digital audiences through saturated and tightly controlled ad networks and eCommerce markets.

Small businesses should consider API monetization to accelerate product development. If you begin small but design for scalability, you can earn the rewards of exposing your APIs. In smaller companies, where customer and product focus is more specialized, designing APIs for their consumers could help them develop an agility advantage.

I'd recommend starting by creating internal APIs to establish your business case and provide initial proof of concept. Then, promote internal consumption and enhance the APIs' capabilities. That's when a comprehensive API management platform can help you with governance, monitoring, and analytics.

Overall, small businesses should be turning to API management platforms in 2022, but there are conditions to consider, such as if they offer opportunities for cross-team API accountability, integration, monetization, and security. 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Darshan Shivashankar is the founder of Itorix Inc and its product Apiwiz, which offers a Low Code APIOps Platform engineered to streamline API Lifecycle Management for better Productivity with Governance at scale. He has over 15 years of experience in middleware, integration, and APIs with a deep passion for solving interesting problems.