What is Azure API Management and Its Key Components

Azure API Management is a fully managed service that enables you to create, publish, and manage APIs in a secure, scalable, and highly available manner.

It helps organizations to expose their backend systems and data to external developers, partners, and customers, while also providing a layer of security, rate limiting, and analytics.

At its core, Azure API Management is built around several key components that work together to deliver a robust and scalable API management solution.

These components include the API Gateway, which acts as the entry point for API requests, and the Developer Portal, which provides a single point of access for developers to discover, subscribe, and consume APIs.

Azure API Management is a cloud-based service that helps you create, publish, and manage APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) across multiple platforms and devices.

APIs are the building blocks of modern software development, and Azure API Management makes it easy to expose your APIs to a global audience.

API Management provides a layer of abstraction between your API and the outside world, allowing you to control access, rate limit, and monitor API usage.

It also provides features like API keys, subscriptions, and quotas to ensure that your API is used securely and efficiently.

By using Azure API Management, you can reduce the complexity of managing multiple APIs and focus on developing new features and services.

API Management also supports multiple protocols, including REST, SOAP, and GraphQL, making it a versatile solution for a wide range of use cases.

It's a powerful tool that can help you unlock new revenue streams, improve customer engagement, and drive business growth.

API Management is a key component of the Azure platform, and it's designed to work seamlessly with other Azure services, such as Azure Functions and Azure Logic Apps.

Azure API Management is made up of several key components that work together to provide a complete API management solution. The API Gateway acts as the primary component, managing traffic, security, and policy enforcement, and enabling organizations to control the availability and access to the APIs.

The API Gateway is the front-end for the APIs, managing traffic, security, and policy enforcement. It enables organizations to control the availability and access to the APIs.

The Management API is a REST-based API that provides programmatic access to the API Management platform. It enables organizations to automate the creation, deployment, and management of APIs, as well as monitor usage and performance.

Groups and Products are two of the key concepts in Azure API Management. Groups are used to group APIs together and define who has access to the associated APIs. Products are used to bundle together APIs and their associated policies, enabling organizations to provide different levels of access to different consumers.

Here are the main components of Azure API Management:

Azure API Management is a comprehensive solution that consists of several key components, each playing a crucial role in managing and securing APIs.

The API Gateway is the primary component of API Management, acting as a bridge between the API provider and the API consumers, managing traffic, security, and policy enforcement.

The API Publisher Portal is a web-based portal that provides a centralized interface for managing APIs, including creating, publishing, testing, and documenting APIs.

The Management API is a REST-based API that provides programmatic access to the API Management platform, enabling organizations to automate the creation, deployment, and management of APIs.

Groups and Products are two of the key concepts in Azure API Management, with Groups used to group APIs together and define who has access to the associated APIs, and Products used to bundle together APIs and their associated policies.

Here are some of the key features of API Management:

These components work together to provide a complete API management solution, enabling organizations to control the availability and access to their APIs, while also providing a secure and scalable way to manage and analyze API usage.

API Management has built-in groups to manage visibility of products to developers. These groups include Developers and Guests.

Developers are authenticated users who build applications using APIs and are granted access to the developer portal. They can build applications that call the operations of an API.

Guests are unauthenticated users who can view APIs but not call them. They can be granted certain read-only access.

API Management service owners can create custom groups or use external groups in an associated Microsoft Entra tenant. This allows developers to have visibility and access to specific subsets of APIs in a product.

For example, a custom group can be created for developers in a partner organization to access a specific subset of APIs in a product. A user can belong to more than one group.

Azure API Management integrates with many complementary Azure services to create enterprise solutions. It can also be used as a standalone service.

One of the key features of Azure API Management is the API Gateway, which acts as a gateway to APIs, ensuring security and compliance. It also provides a customizable developer portal where API consumers can search for APIs, read documentation, and obtain access keys.

Azure API Management also offers detailed analytics, allowing organizations to understand how their APIs are being used, track performance metrics, and identify any issues. This includes features like OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, and JWT (JSON Web Token) authentication for strong security options.

Here are some of the key features of Azure API Management:

Azure API Management offers a robust set of features that make it an ideal choice for organizations looking to manage their APIs. It's essentially a gateway to APIs, responding to customer inquiries and directing them to the relevant backend services while guaranteeing security and compliance.

The platform provides detailed analytics, helping organizations understand how their APIs are being used. Users can track performance metrics and usage statistics, and identify any issues that may arise.

API Gateway is a key feature, handling requests and responses while ensuring security and compliance. This is crucial for protecting APIs from unauthorized access.

Azure API Management also offers strong security options, including OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, and JWT (JSON Web Token) authentication.

The Developer Portal is a customizable platform where API consumers can search for APIs, read documentation, and obtain access keys. This enhances the developer experience and facilitates better collaboration.

Here are some of the key features of Azure API Management:

Organizations can create APIs in Azure API Management by importing existing APIs or creating new ones from scratch. This involves specifying the endpoints, request/response formats, and API structure.

Azure API Management is geared towards runtime API governance and observability, focusing on the operational aspects of API management, such as securing, publishing, and analyzing APIs in use.

To ensure runtime API governance, Azure API Management offers features like OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, and JWT authentication to protect APIs from unauthorized access.

Organizations can create APIs in Azure API Management by importing existing APIs or creating new ones from scratch, specifying the endpoints, request/response formats, and API structure.

Azure API Management provides a customizable developer portal where API consumers can search for APIs, read documentation, and obtain access keys, enhancing the developer experience and facilitating better collaboration.

To navigate your API ecosystem, you can use Azure API Management to abstract backend architecture diversity and complexity from API consumers, securely expose services hosted on and outside of Azure as APIs, protect, accelerate, and observe APIs, and enable API discovery and consumption by internal and external users.

Here are some common scenarios where Azure API Management can help:

Azure API Center, on the other hand, is tailored for design-time API governance, helping organizations to maintain a structured inventory of all APIs for better discovery and governance.