Preface

Rapid adoption of cloud technologies has revolutionized the way modern-day applications are architected and implemented. Solution architects and IT decision-makers are constantly faced with the challenge to quickly adapt to the latest technology trends to establish a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Gartner has predicted that by 2025, about 80% of enterprises will have shifted their operations to the cloud. Hence, it has become even more imperative that enterprises pay attention to their digital transformation roadmaps to benefit from their cloud-first and mobile-first initiatives. Tactically, this means a lot of changes on the ground, including reinventing business processes, adopting agile and DevOps best practices, and even embarking on the modernization of operations.

API-led architecture is not something new – rather, it has just become a lot more relevant and important in today's world. Cloud computing offers three key benefits: flexibility, efficiency, and strategic value. API-led connectivity has changed the way enterprises interact with their customers and partners. Customers today are very demanding. They expect businesses to be agile and adapt to their demands. They prefer a simple and intuitive approach to meeting their needs. They are open to the use of technology and apps to get the job done in just a few steps. Thus, enterprises are required to utilize the insights derived from analyzing customer behavior as the basis for their digital innovation strategies.

Over the past few years, I have worked with multiple enterprise customers to define their blueprints for a robust and reliable API-led solution. However, the common challenge has been in getting them to understand the benefits of this approach, as it requires some initial investment and work prioritization. It was always a hard sell unless the key stakeholders had prior experience with implementing solutions using a service-oriented architecture (SOA) approach. Many lacked the appetite to incur any additional complexity on top of what they were used to. It was also a revelation to me that teams weren't too well versed in the concept of microservices. Everybody wanted to do it, but nobody seemed to know how to approach it. A few believed that splitting a large monolith into smaller services was, in effect, building microservices. While this was still a good starting point, it lacked a futuristic vision, as the many other aspects of a microservices architecture were not considered as part of the design process. The technical teams were also getting used to the new way of building solutions and would often miss out on the fundamentals, leading to problems later in the life cycle. Teams often lacked a production-first mindset as many of the important architecture-critical requirements were deferred to later.

In this book, it has been my endeavor to provide a glimpse of the "whole nine yards" that is essential for the successful delivery of an API-led enterprise solution. This book focuses on the latest emerging trends in the industry, supplementing theoretical concepts with real-world scenarios and examples to help you grasp the concepts more easily. The book touches upon the important principles and practices that can eventually serve as a checklist for development teams. While I have used the Microsoft Azure cloud as the platform of choice, the topics discussed are valid even for a multi-cloud scenario as well.

After reading this book, you will be well versed in how to architect, design, implement, deploy, and maintain a digital service.