How can I minimise the costs of building and maintaining my APIs?

[dcouldwell]

Most digital programs are under enormous pressure to deliver at speed whilst minimising both delivery and maintenance costs.

How has your API program maximised the value delivered and minimised the maintenance?

[anilsr]

Great Question @Dom Couldwell,

Here is what I think about same,

• DO NOT reinvent the wheel by building everything from scratch.
• Follow API-first approach from day one if you are building new services.
• Build restful microservices & consume same between different applications / services.
• Keep it simple & scalable.
• Follow design first approach using specifications like Open API

[Oliver_Ogg]

Make things repeatable and operationally scaleable:

• Frameworks, re-usable components (such as Apigee Policies, libraries, deployment scripts), core libraries that can be envolved by your engineering community (with confidence)
• Consistent patterns around design, scalability, security
• Automated deployment with test automation
• Guidelines for those wishing to build including: API Design and Security
• Excellent monitoring and consistent Ops
• Excellent Developer (Consumer) Experience: Documentation, dev portals, example code, SDKs

[rtalanki]

My simple answer is start with public cloud solution something like Apigee cloud. Evaluate your programs, sense the benefit and then decide to either grow big on cloud, or move on-prem or build yourself. Important part of this idea is to start soon and get your feet out into engaging Developers.