What are the benefits of API Connect?

IBM API Connect is the complete, scalable and security-rich API management solution that allows you to bring all of your APIs together in one place.

It’s a market-leading API management solution with capabilities to create, secure and socialize APIs across multiple clouds and hybrid use cases.

The key capabilities of IBM API Connect include:

• Integrated developer environments to iteratively create APIs and quickly debug and test them using AI-powered automated testing without having to write test cases

• An API gateway to secure, control and mediate access to APIs through authentication and authorization using OAuth, OpenID Connect and third-party services

• The ability to deploy APIs anywhere, from behind a DMZ to being co-located with cloud-native apps and microservices, protecting access at runtime, anywhere

• Packaging APIs for specific consumer markets, providing governance and version control, and promoting across different environments with subscriptions, monetization and community management

• Completely customizable portals to enable application developers to easily discover and consume your APIs with a single portal, regardless of deployment model

• Making APIs discoverable to external consumers, socializing APIs so that more consumers can find them, and creating a self-service internal catalog of APIs to increase developer efficiency

• Analyzing API data to determine both technical and business next steps

• Keeping documentation on all APIs automatically up to date throughout lifecycle and versioning

• Decreasing the time to market for both building APIs and onboarding customers

IBM API Connect provides you with an out-of-the-box solution that’s designed to be easy to deploy and run. It can be extended and scaled to become as capable and complex as you need it to be.

The unique differentiators of IBM API Connect

Although some of the most basic features of API Connect can be found in other API management solutions, unique differentiators make it stand out from the competition:

• A microservices-based architecture that offers deployment flexibility, with mix- and-match components that can be deployed on premises or in any cloud

• Gateway choice and flexibility to support all use cases, from edge, cloud and DMZ to microservices and everything in between

• Support for a wide variety of API standards, including REST, SOAP, GraphQL, WebSockets and AsyncAPIs

• Unique rate limiting for GraphQL APIs to help secure your back ends

• AI-powered testing of APIs—without having to write test cases—to improve developer productivity

• Built-in API lifecycle management to provide a seamless experience to API consumers during versioning

• A trusted, security-hardened gateway with built-in policies to protect APIs and support enterprise standards and security protocols such as OAuth, OIDC, JWT, SAML and so on

• A customizable developer portal for discovering and socializing your APIs with federated identity management and self-service user onboarding