The explosion of APIs has introduced significant security challenges due to the risk of exposing sensitive data. In this video, Alex Drag, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Gravitee, discusses the company’s API management platform and how it helps organizations deal with the challenges of APIs. On discussing how the platform enables governance across a heterogeneous API gateway and management ecosystem, he says, “It does not matter which API, gateway, or broker you use. With Gravitee, it is all manageable.”

Introduction to Gravitee and how it helps organizations tackle API security challenges

• Gravitee is an API management platform that provides an API Gateway to securely and reliably expose APIs or services to API consumers or client-side applications. Drag gives us an overview of its features.
• APIs have evolved from being mere integration tools to being treated as products, vital for internal developers, customers, and partners. This shift involves managing APIs across their entire lifecycle, from creation to deprecation.
• Drag explains that the explosion of APIs brings security challenges, as APIs can expose sensitive data and must be properly authorized. Discoverability is another issue, making it hard for developers to find and use the right APIs among thousands.

What are the challenges of API management?

• Drag tells us that large organizations often face API sprawl using multiple API gateways and management solutions, complicating governance. He explains how Federated API management addresses these challenges.
• Drag explains that Gravitee provides a universal governance and publication layer, enabling centralized management of multiple API Gateways like AWS and Apigee.
• Gravitee’s solution offers a single interface for discovering, managing, and subscribing to APIs, reducing developer access time from 30 days to one day.

The state of the API management market and what sets Gravitee apart

• Drag describes the API management market as large but not fully mature, with no single solution covering all use cases perfectly. He discusses various vendors including the hyperscalers and smaller players.
• Gravitee enables organizations to use any preferred gateway while providing a unified governance layer. Drag explains how this flexibility empowers teams to choose the best tools for their needs while managing them centrally with Gravitee.
• Drag explains that Gravitee uses infrastructural components to automatically discover and import new APIs from different gateways, creating API assets that can be published to a developer portal without needing an additional gateway.

What is Gravitee’s vision for modern API Management?

• Drag asserts that having a single pane of glass for API management is not just hype but a reality achievable today. Historically this required a single gateway management solution, but Gravitee’s approach allows organizations to manage APIs centrally regardless of their gateway strategy.
• Drag outlines Gravitee’s modern API management with three pillars: multi-gateway and multi-broker support, prioritizing event APIs and event streams, and AI-forward strategies.
• Gravitee will continue to expand its federation support, aiming for service-agnostic API management.

Guest: Alex Drag (LinkedIn)
Company: Gravitee (Twitter)
Show: Let’s Talk

This summary was written by Emily Nicholls.