We can all remember a time when we had a negative experience with a platform service. Perhaps we ran into a set of reoccurring errors or the platform was unreliable and continually crashed. The classical example of this might be the early days of Apple Maps. In any case, the common thread of these experiences is the feeling of frustration from valuable time lost, resulting in a tarnished relationship with the product. Thankfully, in the world of APIs, customer-facing teams have taken note.

For the past few years, microservices have been the talk of the town, with numerous success stories across big business and start-ups alike. However, with the rise of containerization in the enterprise, we are starting to hear about this term again as the new Holy Grail, the next step in the evolution of our applications. In this article we’ll look at some of the main driving forces behind why many developers now see microservices as the the future of application development.

While monitoring is an important part of any robust application deployment, it can also seem overwhelming to get a full application performance monitoring (APM) stack deployed. In this post, we’ll see how operating a Kubernetes environment using the open-source Kong Ingress Controller can simplify this seemingly daunting task! You’ll learn how to use Prometheus and Grafana on Kubernetes Ingress to simplify APM setup.

Load testing isn’t an engineer’s favorite task. Every setup choice made during performance testing will yield varying results. The chosen load test protocol is the difference between an application that performs well under most circumstances and one that buckles at hidden stress points. Yet failing to run adequate tests isn’t an option when dealing with a complex API architecture. Needless to say, all your load testing options must be carefully evaluated.

When time-to-market can make the difference between being a market leader or “just another product,” the need for speed and agility are crucial. As many as 35% of today’s companies generated more than a quarter of their revenue as a direct result of APIs. As a start-up, you’ll need a strategy that supports rapid product delivery which ultimately shortens the customer feedback loop. Here, we’ll discuss the top five API development strategies for building robust APIs.

Increasing API-led connectivity allows for frequently needed modifications for rapidly changing technology and and is a way for businesses to manage data and process in a highly efficient manner. API-led business systems reduce costs and eliminate bulky hardware and other complications such as licensing and workforce requirements. Ultimately, API-led connectivity enables you to streamline your business and ensure your technology stack is as running as effectively as possible.

As the software application world moves from monolith architectures to microservices, we are also seeing a shift toward developing modular and reusable APIs. According to APIOps, reusable APIs are consumable APIs, which means they must be well-documented and compliant. The separation between the designers, builders and consumers of an API grows larger and larger, making the API specification even more central to that API’s success.

Back in the day, it was normal to buy or rent servers and pay for them in a lump sum, independent of utilization. With the rise of serverless computing, infrastructure to build APIs has become cheaper, and on-demand pricing is the norm. Now that you only pay for what you use, why not include usage-based pricing as a feature in your own SaaS offering. With usage-based pricing your customers don’t get intimidated by high upfront costs, instead their costs grow as their business grows.