What could be more confusing than two words that are inverted? What are the real meanings and benefits of an API Product vs. a Product API. This blog piece explores this hefty question.
What is an API Product?
An API Product is when APIs are combining their resources to give a certain amount of access for client app developers. This endeavor requires not only a list of API proxies, along with access limits, API key approval method but other configurations that should be in place for all the bundled proxies. What does all this mean for the API world? Broken down, it means businesses can bundle their resources and bring monetary value to the API.
What is the role of an API Product Manager?
API Products, like any good product, require an API Product Manager. Watch Axway Catalyst Brian Otten discuss the role of an API Product Manager below, as well as their importance within an organization in making the cultural shift toward a product mindset.
Business utilization
When all is said and done, you can think of an API Product as your product line. You can create an API Product to bundle your APIs at service levels for client app developers. Different API Products give different uses for different levels. With this thought process, you can create an API Product that solves a user’s specific needs.
Let’s get technical
It’s important to realize that an API Product gets technical when you want to add support for API keys and for also accessing quotas, such as to limit the number of requests allowed per minute. API keys are provisioned for API Products, not for an API as a solo artist.
Axway Catalyst Erik Wilde dives deeper into an additional distinction between API products and API-as-a-Product in this blog, and he also shares a helpful API product definition.
What is a Product API?
The difference from an API Product vs. the Product API is that a Product API is used to manage your product catalog. The Product API automatically extracts extensive information from any shopping or e-commerce product page to work in an efficient manner. For example, you can get full price information, images, product provisions, product IDs (SKU, etc.), brands and more. Plans and APIs are grouped into products.
Through Product APIs, you can oversee their availability and visibility. Further, a Product API is a completely different animal from an API Product—are you totally confused? To break it down, the Product API allows a user to make direct requests to a database, so they can decide for themselves what features they want to go and utilize.
Simply put, this method is more adaptable and responsive to the user’s needs. Via this ability, you can easily manage products.
Conclusion
In conclusion, an API Product vs. the Product API is a different ball of wax altogether. They both work in different ways to allow APIs to flourish in their respective manners.
Read more information about what an API Product is here.