Is Azure API management PaaS or SAAS?

Is Azure API management PaaS or SAAS? SUMMARY: Azure API management is one of the go-to service providers for businesses that need to manage their applications and users better. Therefore, you must understand whether APIM is a PaaS or SaaS provider.

Text

The rapid changes in the IT world have led to cloud computing services that allow resources to be distributed as services. These are grouped as Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Product as a service (PaaS), Software as a service (SaaS), and many more. APIs have provided a platform that enables the interaction of systems, tools, and applications for businesses. Azure API management is increasingly becoming popular as a PaaS and SaaS, but its functionality relies on the PaaS element.

Azure API Management Azure API management is a cloud-based PaaS server that offers Azure for businesses and governments. Azure API management (APIM) is a comprehensive store for API systems and can create products, develop policies and maximize the extensive developer portals.

Azure infrastructure seamlessly integrates with API management and manages APIs existing on other clouds. APIM can also be found on the IL4 and IL5 environments for Azure Government which allows extension and control of public sector workers.

Azure API management entails a few key concepts to be functional to developers.   

Products Policies Developer portal

APIM provides security to leverage rate limits and abstraction and consolidates and governs API in Azure. Developers can ingest any API, and it is much simpler when the APIs use Open API Format.

Products The layer of abstraction within Azure API management is the product. These products allow you to develop API subsets already in the solution. This results in the overlapping use of APIs and restricting the functionality of individually collected APIs. Compartmentalization of APIM makes it easy to sort APIs and separately enforce rules on the logical buckets giving you extra control. The groups created inside the APIM allow the admins to bundle and protect their APIs, permitting them only to add users associated with the APIM into separate subsets.

Admins can ensure only the right people can access the appropriate APIs stored in their APIM instance if there are many user groups.

Policies The azure API manager needs policies to enforce the restriction and provide subtle control. There are plenty of policies in AIPM that can be as simple as blocking the use of an API after five calls, authentication, logging, caching, and transforming requests and responses.

Policies are the most pivotal functions of an APIM and can facilitate control that every user wants and needs. XML is used to write policies that can be edited using the APIM XML editor.

Developer Portal The Azure API Management developer portal allows developers to view APIs, products, and respective applications. The portal also displays request body samples meaning developers do not have to guess API request formats. Developer portals also incorporate various code samples in multiple languages.

Developers can also use API calls with custom request bodies and headers to see the exact type of call they are making. Considering the functionality of the developer portal, you can download your OpenAPISpec copy to use for the API after ingesting it into the instance.

Who should use Azure API Management?

By now, every business is using some API management system. API management allows companies to have some level of previously unavailable control. Developing an API Gateway provides an additional layer of abstraction that ensures close control of APIs.

APIM gains broad functionality levels after ingesting an API. Azure API management allows you to match the APIs to products for compartmentalization. You can include various groups to each product which can be subsets of users. APIM also facilitates the automatic generation of a robust developer portal which provides similar functionality to the Swagger portal with new features like code snippets.