Amplify API Management

Breaking down The Forrester Wave™: API Management Solutions, Q3 2020

| Shawn Ryan |

With the current climate, with the current uncertainty… we have rocketed 10 years ahead. Previously, the need for innovation was often mistakenly seen as novel or ignored due to “the way we always did it” or due to “we will never change.” Or it was simply bypassed as business was strong enough. And then we were hit with a wake-up call.

Truly now only the fittest will survive. The future jettisoned ahead. The fittest are now marked by those that are nimble and those that are quickly adapting their business to new customer experience expectations or more so customer experience necessities.

Behind all this is a culture shock and fast organizational alignment to meet the demands. Further behind this is the technology. Technology is the touchpoint with the customer, with the markets, and with suppliers. Technology is also the foundation for new business models. Those that are esteemed are founded in leveraging the strength of the ecosystem. And technology connects ecosystems.

The technology at the core here is of course APIs. APIs expose business capabilities as services to developers and ecosystems to deliver these business models and experiences. And timely with this wake-up call, Forrester has released their much anticipated The Forrester Wave™: API Management Solutions, Q3 2020 with an emphasis on API design, bolstering cloud-native application architectures, strong ways to build API-based business ecosystems, API user engagement and API portals that go beyond rest. This report embraces those that go beyond REST and embrace microservices architectures to “successfully deliver a strong foundation for continuous digital transformation to their customers.”¹ The right API strategy is critical at this time. Check out their report.

As the report states “By opening access to digital business capabilities, APIs drive agility to optimize customer experiences, create dynamic digital ecosystems, achieve operational excellence, and build platform business models”¹.

Leaders in this year’s report include Software AG, Google, IBM, WSO2, and Axway. Some of the highlights we noted for each leader include:

  • Software AG – “Software AG’s solution did well across a strong majority of our criteria, particularly in its portal, API user engagement, and product architecture aspects”¹
  • Google – “Google has rich resources for educating customers and prospects on API business potential, including using them to create new ecosystem models.”¹
  • IBM – “Recognizing the importance of non-REST APIs, IBM’s support for publishing GraphQL APIs is among the best.”¹
  • WSO2 – “The fully open-source nature of the product adds a layer of flexibility, should customers need it, in addition to offering a free-forever path to getting started with API management through open source self-support.”¹
  • Axway – “Axway’s service mesh integration and support for non-Axway gateways (e.g., Amazon API Gateway) extend the solution’s reach and address combined API and microservices strategies”¹

Don’t stop reading here though. You can also as a Forrester subscriber create your own weighting on requirements as an aide to find the best solution for you.

Check out the full report for each vendor’s evaluation profile.

Click Here

¹The Forrester Wave™: API Management Solutions, Q3 2020, Forrester Research, Inc., August 4, 2020