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Access

APIs are abstract and difficult to see, creating anxiety about who has access to put digital resources and capabilities to use. While a significant amount of discussion in the last decade has been about public APIs, the majority of APIs are only available privately, existing in the shadows behind our web and mobile applications.

Access

It is critical for organizations to effectively control the visibility of their APIs, quickly and confidently moving them from private team use to make them available to partners or third-party developers. This ability will play an outsized role in the velocity of enterprises doing business today.

  • Private - Being private means keeping APIs and the operations around them private and available to stakeholders on an invitation-only basis.

  • Teams - You can limit access to APIs, workspaces, documentation, and other elements of the API life cycle to the teams who will be producing or consuming them internally. Eventually, you may decide to make them available to partners or public consumers.

  • Groups - In many organizations, APIs are only available to a specific group, domain, or legacy tribal boundary. Access is limited based on lines of business and the needs of applications and integrations within a single group.

  • Partners - You can also choose to expose APIs, documentation, mock servers, environments, and testing to trusted external partners. That will allow them to view or contribute to producing or consuming APIs, using workspaces and repositories to engage across the life cycle.

  • Public - It is common to make workspaces, APIs, and other elements available to the public, applying necessary authentication and access controls. That allows anyone to watch, fork, learn from, and work with the APIs around them. API visibility can be anxiety-inducing if enterprises do not have organizational-wide API management, authentication, access controls, and other security practices in place. APIs are all about striking the right balance between access and control, while keeping everything in alignment with business needs and consumer expectations.