Part and parcel of modern enterprise development is building APIs that enable you to expose your services to developers both inside and outside your organization. But just building APIs isn’t enough. Getting APIs and API programs to market successfully hinges on convincing your developers to actually use them. And the key driver of getting developers to adopt and consume APIs, both within a company or among the wider developer community, is the developer portal.

APIs have come a long way from the arcane geek-speak of software interfaces popularized by Win32 APIs (still among the most commonly searched API phrases). Today, APIs represent interfaces between businesses and large swaths of internal enterprise services and business units. APIs not only connect software to software but also help to create entire commercial ecosystems, and so have become integral parts of how enterprises conduct business.

Good API design separates APIs that merely expose assets from those that help developers get things done. As I’ve written before, and as we’ll explore in this article, good design includes the style in which web API URLs are constructed.

Whether in the tech press or analyst reports, it became more common in 2018 to see the words “API” and “security”—or worse, “API” and “breach”—together in the same headline. APIs are not only the connective tissue between applications, systems, and data, but also the mechanisms that allow developers to leverage and reuse these digital assets for new purposes.

Apigee experts published over 50 editorials in 2018 — including dozens here in APIs and Digital Transformation — to help developers, IT architects, and business leaders understand how to maximize the value of APIs and keep pace with constant technological change.

2018 was an AMAZING year for Google Cloud’s Apigee team. It was, in fact, another “best year ever.” We’re deeply grateful to the companies who use Apigee to accelerate their businesses with APIs.