Amazon API Gateway

UPDATED 11/9/18

Back in 2015, Amazon announced its new Amazon API Gateway. The Amazon API Gateway is a cloud-based service that is designed “to simplify the creation and management of APIs,” particularly APIs in front of Amazon services such as AWS Lambda.

Welcome Amazon API Gateway entry

As an established API Gateway vendor, we welcome Amazon’s new entry into the market. It wasn’t long ago that people would ask why API Gateways are even needed; nobody is asking that question now.

In the market, Amazon’s API Gateway has a particular role to play when bridging APIs with Amazon infrastructure. As such, it will be useful for organizations that have deployed services on Amazon and wish to “API-ize” them.

However, a full-featured API Gateway is often used to expose on-premises infrastructure as APIs, with features like authentication against Microsoft Active Directory, plus fine-grained authorization and throttling. The Amazon API Gateway lacks this capability, as noted by Neil Mansilla of Runscope:

Matt Biehl, on his API University blog, has also noted the lack of another common enterprise feature: OAuth support: “What is lacking from my perspective is the missing support for OAuth. The Amazon API Gateway does not offer a standard OAuth Provider.” 

But the picture is not all negative. The Amazon API Gateway can be augmented by using an enterprise API Gateway like the Axway API Gateway, in order to provide:

– Integration with identity infrastructures such as SiteMinder, Oracle Access Manager, and Microsoft Active Directory
– Protocol bridging to on-premises systems like TIBCO, SAP, and databases
– Orchestration of APIs (sometimes called “Lightweight ESB” functionality)
– Operational intelligence and business analytics

Noteworthy

It is also noteworthy that the Amazon API Gateway isn’t being positioned as a full API Management solution, but just as an API Gateway for Amazon. API Gateways is often deployed as part of an overall API Management solution, including not only an API Gateway but a Developer Portal also. Amazon is not providing a Developer Portal, which is a significant limitation.

Overall, the new Amazon API Gateway is an excellent validation of the API Gateway category. Although it is not an enterprise product, it does have a part to play, by acting as a Gateway into backend services running on AWS infrastructures, such as EC2 or RDS.