There seems to be a tendency amongst architects to think of microservices as a way to build entire applications, taking monoliths and completely re-implementing them as a set of microservices. This belief makes a lot of architects, especially in large enterprise, question whether microservices is right for their organization. I think there is a different… Continue reading →
Organization culture is often a great barrier to a digital transformation. Getting everyone to think in terms of digital business – rather than business as usual – can be extremely challenging. And, I do mean everyone, from the business to the technical employees. It’s not that people don’t have the potential to change. Chances are,… Continue reading →
Early in 2015 I predicted that API management and security solutions, microservices development, and application integration across platforms and devices would converge in a major way. I have been predicting this convergence for quite some time (2015, 2014, 2013); first when we established the concept of the API Economy in 2012, and more recently when we… Continue reading →
Akana Provides a Roundup of API Security Overview Resources and Thought Leadership As more enterprises engage in their digital transformation, they are connecting their application through APIs. APIs have long been the connective tissue between, and among, software applications. Because they enable business-critical transactions, it is critical that they be both highly accessible and usable,… Continue reading →
Just like Marty McFly in Back to the Future II, we have crash-landed in October of 2015 and oh, boy – what a future we’ve found. We’re only two years away from Gartner’s widely-quoted prediction that 20% of all market leaders will be displaced by companies formed after 2000 due to a lack of digital… Continue reading →
Recently Forrester’s Randy Heffner published a very good report on The API Management Solutions Market Heats Up. In the report, Akana is mentioned as a leader with “Consistently rich and deep functionality across all core functions. Particularly well suited for broad-based enterprise-level API initiatives.” Before this report, Forrester published the famous Forrester Wave reports. Akana was… Continue reading →
First lets start off by clarifying not all APIs requires you to charge for their usage to bring value to your company. There are many different business models for APIs beyond the developer pays. In fact, the developer pays makes up a very small percentage of the APIs in the market today. For the remainder… Continue reading →
A customer in Boston opens a ticket on your API for poor performance. Another customer in New York opens a ticket on that same API, saying it is completely down. However, your platform monitors tell you everything is fine with your API. You spend hours on the phone trying to convince the customers it is… Continue reading →
APIs are a pillar of emerging digital transformation initiatives within enterprises. They provide the digital connectivity between the growing number of constituents in the digital economy, enabling enterprises to open up their business models to new and often disruptive initiatives. These include mobile, Internet of Things (IoT) access and embedded-in-partner applications. As with any new… Continue reading →
One of the more important functions of an API Gateway is to create APIs that return well-structured content from existing services and resources that may not be the prettiest things you’ve ever seen. A really common example is create a clean JSON document from data that is sourced from multiple backend SOAP services. This is where templating provides an… Continue reading →
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a blog on how FHIR® (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource)APIs will accelerate healthcare’s digital transformation. I touched briefly on the HL7® FHIR® specification and the Resources that form its foundation. The FHIR® spec is built on a set of Resources that can be used by themselves or combined to satisfy a majority… Continue reading →
I’m very pleased to say that we have completed the release of Envision, our new analytics platform. Envision will help customers derive key insights about their business from API interactions happening across their digital properties. Envision enables 3 classes of analytics: Operational – health, availability, throughput, latency, and billing metrics API – developer community engagement,… Continue reading →
The healthcare industry is going through a digital transformation. Healthcare records are increasingly becoming digitized to ensure that patients’ electronic health records are available, discoverable and understandable as people move around the healthcare eco-system. Healthcare is one industry where the Internet of Things is not just for fun, but rather a life-saving, life-sustaining measure. Along… Continue reading →
Akana recently surveyed over 200 architects, managers and DevOps experts about their API security practices, and it is clear from the below graphic that many are seeking advice and a solution to mitigate a wide array of API attack vectors as they attempt to do business in the public cloud securely. 1. Man/Bot-In-The-Middle / Session… Continue reading →
Retail as an industry has undergone a significant digital shift since the late 1990s, with retailers competing to attract new customers or maximize share-of-wallet of existing customers. To stay relevant, they need to quickly adapt to the changing market landscape and provide multi-channel engagement across web, mobile, social and traditional brick-an-mortar stores. Competitive differentiation in… Continue reading →
Confession, I was not a believer in Hypermedia APIs. When I would attend a conference and hear the dream behind the academic theory of API flexibility, unbreakable and adaptable clients, no need for documentation among other dreams, I would laugh silently, mock, and say to myself, yeah right these guys do not live in the real… Continue reading →
Amazon, Uber, Netflix, Tesla are all examples of businesses that have disrupted their markets, to dominate their traditional counterparts. These companies, and others like them, are using technology to change the way products are designed, manufactured, sold and serviced around the globe. Digital manufacturing, digital market places, connected value chains, dynamic and on-demand servicing and… Continue reading →
I’m trying to crystalize my own thinking around what microservices are, and how they differ from traditional SOA services. Microservices are clearly a form of SOA service, which we can also call Web services (…a method of communication between two electronic devices over a network…). Some people will say that microservices are just SOA services, and… Continue reading →
It’s always the most prosaic things that get you. For Napoleon it was the Russian winter. For the NASA Mars Orbiter it was the metric system. For cloud it’s access to data. IBM focused on this last point in a major way at the InterConnect 2015 conference. Robert LeBlanc, Senior VP of IBM Cloud had… Continue reading →
Why We Changed Our Name and What It Means For Our Business and Yours One of the best things about working here is the collaborative nature of our team. We throw around ideas, critique each other’s suggestions, and ultimately arrive at some pretty smart decisions through a combination of talking, illustrating, venting, analysis, logic, and… Continue reading →
