Axway positioned as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: API Management Solutions, Q3 2022¹
It is an honor for Axway to be positioned as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: API Management Solutions, Q3 2022¹. We are immensely grateful to our customers who shared their positive experience with Axway.
Most of all, we feel this positioning is validation of our open platform vision and our focus on helping businesses extend their APIs further with the right strategy.
An open platform for universal API management
Axway was one of 15 select companies that Forrester invited to participate in its 2022 Forrester Wave™ evaluation, API Management Solutions, Q3 2022. In this evaluation of its Amplify API Management Platform, Axway earned the highest scores possible in twelve evaluation criteria, including:
- advanced policy and tooling
- REST API specification and design
- authentication and rate limiting
- analytics and reporting
- product vision
- market approach
(Learn more by downloading the report today)
I love this line from the report that highlights what it means to be open in a technical sense:
“Axway focuses on digital business that is multi-cloud, multi-protocol, and multi-gateway.” ¹
In other words, we enable truly universal API management. I recently shared that as the API-first paradigm becomes ingrained into enterprise development and products and services are increasingly connected to APIs, complexity also grows.
The abundance of APIs — perhaps accounting for as many as 50% or more of total access points in some enterprise systems — presents a significant challenge for organizations because each API requires security, versioning, monitoring capabilities, management, and governance.
It’s all about API consumption
Our Amplify API Management Platform responds exceptionally well to the challenge of growing API complexity. It lets you discover, use, and govern APIs across multiple gateways, vendors, and environments, simplifying adoption and use of APIs.
But we also know that providing an industry-leading API management solution isn’t enough: just as essential is accompanying our customers in designing an API management strategy that will drive the best results from a company’s investment. And that’s where the first part of that quote takes on new meaning:
“Axway focuses on digital business that is multi-cloud, multi-protocol, and multi-gateway.”¹
Your APIs are worthless if they are not being used. A company can build hundreds of APIs, but if it cannot clearly solve a pain point, those APIs may sit unused – an expensive proposition.
Ultimately, APIs must be driving your digital business, and this requires a business-led approach. It starts with identifying the end customer and the problem you are solving for them, and then offering a product (your API) to meet this need.
If you want to derive the greatest value from an API management platform, don’t focus on building more APIs. Focus on building the right APIs, then on making sure they are easy to discover, consume, and reuse. Consumable APIs are:
- Designed and packaged in a manner that clearly demonstrates their business value,
- Purposefully and collaboratively built by IT and business teams,
- Discoverable, easy to use and reuse.
The final step in making APIs consumable is to present them in a logical, productized, curated form with a digital services marketplace.
An API marketplace is where your API consumers – internal or external developers – go to consume API products. It should expose API products for easy discovery and consumption by developers, who need to easily be able to search, filter, find ratings, view reviews, and connect with an expert when needed.
Universal API management allows for complete and unified visibility and telemetry across all API platforms. And if you have a business vision, you know it’s essential that your consumer (both internal and external) is receiving the expected value. A universal API management approach allows you to measure that by their consumption of and engagement with all of your APIs.
The value of expertise
If there were a secret sauce for developing the right vision and strategy for your APIs, as the saying goes, I’d be a billionaire. But at Axway, we do have the next best thing: the Axway Catalysts.
A team of experts from around the world with a passion for digital transformation and the API space, the Catalysts help enterprises implement the right strategy to accompany our platform and make it work for their business objectives. And they came up many times in analyst interviews for The Forrester Wave™ report¹:
“Reference customers praise Catalysts, with one calling it an ‘absolute must-have’ service.”¹
Thanks to our focus on customer success and product scalability, we’re helping companies around the world drive business growth. Just look at how a leading research-driven pharma company, Boehringer Ingelheim, is generating value through API-powered digital solutions in the cloud.
“Our partnership with Axway means we no longer have to build, manage and maintain thousands of separate interfaces with no flexibility or reusability. We’ve already implemented key initiatives within our human pharmaceuticals and animal health business units to reimagine key business capabilities as API products. These API products are accelerating our digital transformation journey,” said Jon Nyholt, Head of IT EDS Architecture.
“We’re continuing to work closely with Axway Catalysts to refine our approach to API management — and we’re confident that we are building capabilities that will enable us to leap ahead of the pack. We are realizing with the help of Axway Catalysts that we need to focus on adoption efforts beyond technology,” said Siddharth Dixit, head of IT EDS Data and application integration.
Consider Catalyst Brian Otten’s thoughts on helping HM Health Solutions accelerate their platform journey:
“We want people to see APIs as business products rather than just technology components,” Otten explains, “because a platform represents not just bits of running technology but a whole new business model.”
“HM Health Solutions has partnered with the Axway Catalyst team on digital transformation of our API Ecosystem from project-focused services to an API First, APIs-as-Products culture,” says Marc Patterson, Senior Architect – HMHS Enterprise Architecture, HM Health Solutions.
“The tools, techniques, and modern API thought processes introduced by the Catalyst team have provided significant value to Highmark. While our organization is in the early phases of the API First Journey, our internal and external customers have already been delighted with the early progress and API experiences the Catalyst team helped us create. We look forward to continuing the Journey.”
Finally, our work with Commerzbank, a leading German private and corporate bank with international presence has been a rich experience. Powered by Amplify, they are now creating new business models and enabling innovative fintech partnerships.
“Axway has been a great support to us – not only in running an API platform but also in increasing our visibility for potential partners in the digital market,” says Christoph Berentzen, Head of API & Open Banking at Commerzbank.
We’re proud to be recognized as a Leader in the latest The Forrester Wave™: API Management Solutions, Q3 2022 report. And we will continue to work hand-in-hand with enterprises to not just offer them a top-rated API management platform, but also help shift mindsets and build with a business-minded vision.
Let us help you achieve your collaboration and innovation demands today and into the future.
¹The Forrester Wave™: API Management Solutions, Q3 2022, Forrester Research, Inc., August 22, 2022
Click here to view the complete Forrester Wave™ report.