Guidelines for designing APIs
When designing an API, you need to consider the following aspects:
- Who is the consumer (is this an internal/external API)?
- Which protocol will be used for connection and information exchange?
- How will authentication be performed (if any)?
- What are the performance goals of the API?
- Do you need additional features such as throttling/caching/conditional access (CA)?
- Are you planning to monetize your API?
Depending on your answer, the use of Azure API Management may or may not be justified. A general rule of introducing such a service depends on your business capabilities and requirements. That said, we always need to challenge our choice against requirements and overall goals.
As it is now possible to host Azure API Management in serverless mode (meaning you pay only for usage), this is still a service mostly beneficial for bigger companies that can leverage its capabilities and see value in centralizing the management...