Enabling Customers for Success on Azure API Gateway

Application Programming Interface (API) management is a vital component in many development environments. As such, when we talk about successful API implementations, there isn't a popular conversation without highlighting some of the best tools for API management like Azure API Gateway. 

Azure API Gateway has been taking the market by storm as an integration and management tool for your Azure-powered applications. It provides a pay-as-you-go pricing model and support for over 300 different protocols and APIs. The flexibility of Azure is what makes it stand out from its competition. 

The service overall is simple and easy to use. However, there are still nuances that even the most seasoned developers might run into. 

So, what does it take to propel customer success on Azure API Gateway? 

In this blog, we'll take you through a step-by-step overview of how true success can be achieved by enabling your customers via Azure API Gateway. By the end of this post, we hope to show you how to exploit Azure API Gateway in fully achieving that success.

Provide Easier Access and Use

When it comes to Azure, Microsoft wants your Azure customers to be successful. Azure API Gateway helps companies increase value for their Azure cloud services by making them easier to access and use. Azure API Management shares this mission of enabling customers to become successful with Azure, and so should your organization.

From a customer's point of view, there are several business benefits that Azure API Management provides, including:

• Making the Azure platform easier to use.
• Helping IT professionals focus on core competencies such as developing apps rather than managing APIs.
• Allowing developers and testers to easily call APIs from outside the organization without prior knowledge of those APIs or dependency on internal network topology.
• Enabling partners who need access to company APIs to do a straightforward thing – register and log into Azure.
• Making it easier for partners to monetize the APIs they build on Azure by making them available outside the organization's firewall.
• Enabling customers to easily secure APIs and manage policy changes such as throttling, quotas, and pricing without touching the code of their API implementation.

The Azure management portal provides more benefits by providing a quick and easy way to get started with Azure API Management. But this is not to say that you should assume that your customers are ready to go once you provide the sign-in credentials to their respective Azure API Gateway account.

Unfortunately, that's far from what customers demand. 

Today, most Azure customers want more control than what is provided out of the box. They need:

• Visibility into how APIs are used at run time.
• The ability to configure policies that enable them to chargeback for API usage.
• Deeper insight into who is using their APIs.
• The flexibility to change their policies without having to redeploy their API implementation. 

Ensure your Azure API Gateway Management provides what your customers need with round-the-clock assistance at a base level.

Involve your Customers 

While the Azure management portal is easy to use, some Azure customers may prefer a more hands-on approach for managing THEIR Azure resources. Tools such as Azure Resource Manager (ARM) PowerShell cmdlets provide this capability through Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates, which allow customers to create, update, and delete Azure services from code. 

Customers can also manage resources programmatically by using the Azure REST APIs. Using these tools lets your partners automate repetitive tasks in addition to providing version control for all available Azure resources. 

They can also monitor resource usage using Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS). ARM templates allow you to create Azure resources like Azure App Service applications, Azure Virtual Networks (VNets), Azure Cloud Services, and Azure Web Apps.

ARM templates are built on Azure Resource Graph; the Azure resource definition format used to represent services in ARM templates. Using these JSON-based templates can help ensure that all Azure resources are created consistently across different environments. 

What's more, customers get the full power of any programming language supported by Azure REST APIs to manipulate this model programmatically to create new services or update existing ones without manually entering them through the portal. 

The only limit with using ARM template scripts for creating or updating Azure resources is that it requires an experienced PowerShell scripter who understands the intricacies of Azure API operations which your organization should also provide.

Ensure Scalability and Flexibility 

Azure API Gateway is a fully managed service that enables customers to expose their Azure services to the internet. This involves creating flexible usage plans, applying security policies for access control, and monitoring API activity through the Azure or API management portal.

Your organization can use Azure API Gateways as an entry point for customer APIs to expose them over the internet – either directly or via on-premises devices – and incorporate important aspects like throttling, caching, etc. and monitoring into cloud-based back-end systems and Azure services. 

These capabilities enable you to satisfy diverse business scenarios, such as providing high availability and reducing latency. Azure API Gateway is built with extensibility in mind; they provide native support for allowing third-party request processing filters and Azure Logic Apps to run at the gateway. 

Azure API Gateways can provide a central point of connectivity into customer back-end services while also providing rich capabilities for securing, scaling, and managing APIs. 

With Azure API Gateways, you can connect web or mobile apps built on top of back-end systems hosted in Azure or outside Azure. This enables customers to provide an HTTP entry point to calling clients on the internet or on-premises.

 Azure API Management allows you to quickly establish an HTTP façade over existing back-end systems such as websites, virtual machines (VMs), cloud services, and on-premises solutions like non-Azure websites and legacy applications.

Personalized Services 

Azure API Management helps you create Azure gateways that control back-end services and enable a personalized, self-service customer experience for Azure developers. 

You can use Azure API Management to create an Azure gateway as a front door for your company's business data - whether it's stored in Azure or on-premises – all while delivering a personalized experience for each user. 

Azure API management lets you manage APIs quickly and efficiently so that every developer or customer has the service they need to be successful. Consequently, custom management helps you design scalable APIs that won't break your budgets.

Pronix API management services provide the right tools, SDKs, and other resources needed to create a modern application façade—all ready-to-deploy with Azure Resource Manager templates. It also lets you manage APIs quickly and efficiently so that every developer has the service they need to be successful.

This also allows developers to quickly build web APIs for mobile and SaaS applications and then integrate them into Azure AD for authentication and authorization. Azure API Management provides the tools, SDKs, and other resources needed to create a modern application façade—all ready-to-customize out of the box. 

Last but not least, it’s easier to monitor who is using the APIs so that you can better understand which portfolios are most popular among customers or partners.

Looking for an IT Solutions partner who you can trust for your Azure API Gateway? Connect with Pronix API development team to discuss just how APIs are critical for every digital business. The Azure API Gateway is one of the best ways to communicate securely between APIs or any microservice.

Suppose you're new to Azure API Management or struggling to achieve velocity, Pronix can help address such pain points and put your organization at the forefront of Azure API Gateway success.

Pronix Application Development and Management Team have a couple of genuinely motivating real-world cases to let you know possibilities aren't limited with Azure API Gateway. Leverage our Azure expertise today at Pronix IT Outsourcing Services in New York, Chicago, or Houston Texas, and see how we can help your organization learn more about Azure API Gateway and reap the rewards.