1.1 How Secure API Manager Solves API Management Issues

The use of APIs has grown significantly in corporate IT environments and many businesses now build their own APIs to develop new services for their users. APIs can be built and implemented more quickly - and provide more flexibility and scalability - than traditional offerings.

Customers often begin to explore API management solutions when they are considering an application transformation project. For example, you might want to achieve mobile integration, create an API-enabled hybrid infrastructure (such as cloud and on-premise workloads and microservices), or even implement a complete digital transformation project across your environment.

As attractive as the use of APIs might be, there is no doubt that managing hundreds or even thousands of public APIs, internal APIs, or business-to-business APIs across mobile devices, web services, public and private clouds, microservices, and so forth, can become very complex. The following graphic depicts how a company can use APIs in its IT environment.

Figure 1-1 How Companies Use APIs

Regardless of your goals, Secure API Manager can solve many of the issues associated with API management. It enables you to manage, create, control, and audit the APIs used in your environment. It provides an API Gateway that manages all the API traffic in your company.

Figure 1-2 How Secure API Manager Controls APIs

Secure API Manager is a solution that you add to Access Manager. You must have Access Manager installed and running before you can deploy Secure API Manager. The following graphic depicts the solutions that NetIQ provides when you combine different products together.

Figure 1-3 Secure API Manager Solution

Secure API Manager provides the following solutions for managing APIs:

The purpose of this guide is to help you understand how to use Secure API Manager to add, manage, and secure the APIs for your company.