API-first strategy

Digitization and an API-First strategy aims at designing digital products to gather business opportunities from multiple channels (web, mobile, bots, IoT, ...).

This context leads companies to open/collaborative innovation and valuation of assets often residing in legacy systems built on opaque and closed technology.  

Securely exposing digital assets on top of these systems requires a scaleable façade (API), sized for a larger audience and built on open web technologies (e.g., REST) and security standards. These lead to new integration paradigms and use of tools for efficient management of a company’s digital assets – this is where the API management platforms come in.

The two purposes of API management:

• From the perspective of API providers, these tools refer to making APIs available, controlling them and analyzing their consumption.
• From the perspective of API consumers, a solution should facilitate the discovery, consumption, and monitoring of APIs.

Last, but not least, an API management solution must cover the valuation of digital assets and address new business models via monetization features. All of these API management features should be part of a virtuous circle aiming at the satisfaction of both parties.

Many products allow you to manage the life cycle of APIs. Strong governance must be in place for an efficient API strategy before selecting and integrating an APIM product.

ELCA’s extensive and proven expertise in API management allows us to accompany our clients in requirements gathering, selection of the appropriate product, implementation of governance, and secure exposure of APIs to partners and customers. For a successful API management program, ELCA relies on its business, organizational and technological expertise in banking, transportation, healthcare ... and many more areas.