(Developer) Portal to the future
Learn about the new webMethods Developer Portal and see how you can create a smooth developer experience, which is the key to a successful API program.
The API economy has evolved to a degree where “old” API portals can no longer support them; companies now need portals that can align with more complex API strategies.
API portals have been around for some time. Many API management vendors offer these platforms for API providers to list their APIs for application development. But, until now, these portals have been mostly black boxes provided by the vendors – with limited integration or customization features – or repackaged content management platforms, which aren’t built for the purpose and have many gaps for API hosting or security.
Times have changed. No one talks much about the API economy anymore because many of you have internalized this concept and made APIs integral to your IT strategies with sophisticated API programs. This evolution comes with requirements that the old portals simply cannot satisfy any longer. Today your organization is looking for a portal that can align with your complex API strategies.
What if you could find a developer portal that responds not only to today’s requirements, but also to tomorrow’s needs?
Rethinking portals
That’s why we have come up with a new Developer Portal to respond to today’s and tomorrow’s needs. We redesigned the webMethods Developer Portal with these sophisticated requirements in mind. Our guiding principle for this new offering was flexibility – in deployment, in customization and in integration.
The Developer Portal has been rearchitected using microservices. This makes it quick to install and lightweight to operate. It only takes a couple of minutes to get it up and running.
Once installed, you can publish your APIs from the webMethods API Gateway with industry-leading security and mediation features, you can connect the Developer Portal with gateways from other vendors, or you can publish third-party APIs. Like I said, flexibility was the driving principle. As much as we would love you to use only webMethods products, we understand that your organization might have requirements to use your Portal as a marketplace for APIs wherever they are hosted. The Developer Portal is up for this task.
Another area of flexibility for the Developer Portal is its headless nature. All the features of its user interface are available as REST APIs. This means that you can easily integrate it with third-party solutions to grow its capabilities. It also means that you can use it as an engine and build your custom front-end.
Speaking of customization, we also built rich features to enable designing the user interface however you want. You can easily add pages, use your specific colors, fonts, logos, or styling guides to reflect your brand identity.
Finally, as part of our re-architecture, we designed it to be able to host assets other than APIs: Integration connectors, B2B integrations, events, etc. In future releases, we will enable this capability to make it a portal of all your assets.
Developer experience is the key
The key to a successful API program is the developer experience. In order to increase the adoption of your APIs, you need to focus on your developers and create a rich and appealing portal. Using the Developer Portal, you can put your developers’ needs to the center and build a portal to attract as many of them as possible.
I just gave you a glimpse into what’s possible with the webMethods Developer Portal. You can download it from the link below or connect with a webMethods expert to try its rich capabilities yourself.