The Infrastructure Behind Large Scale APIs

Jermaine opens up Uber, sets up pick-up and go-to location and starts ordering. While that happens he can view a interactive map of the area surrounding him. This is because the application uses Google Maps API to retrieve those information. This is how API’s are used.

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What is an API?

Application Programming Interface is a procedure which allows communication and exchange of data happen between two software programs. It takes requests from one, and sends a response from another.

So then what’s an API manager?

API manager exists to handle and, like the name suggest, manage API infrastructure of a company. You use it to,

• Share API’s with your partners or developers
• Control access to API’s based on user roles and permissions
• Track statistics
• Monitor service
• Manage workflow of connecting services with API’s

It’s basically a process of overseeing the lifecycle of your API’s. An API manager allows control over who can access the API’s, how they are used, and how they perform. There are a few core components with explanations which makes an API Management tool,

• Gateway: this acts as the entry point for all the API calls, handling routing, security checks, and passing requests through to the backend
• Authentication and Authorization: verifies who makes a request and whether they have permission to do so
• Policies: defines roles around access such as what user can see and do
• Metering: this tracks how many calls are being made which can be used to charge clients based on usage
• Workflow Management: connects API’s with other services to automate and carryout business processes
• Developer Portal: provides external developers and partners a self-service place to discover and get API’s
• Monitoring: provides real-time insights into how API’s are performing, and a bunch of details surrounding them

All of these combined makes API infrastructure secure, scalable and organized.

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Enter WSO2 API Manager

Just like a general API manager, it has core capabilities ranging from designing and creating APIs, gateway capabilities and AI-powered. This API manager is one of many API management platforms out there, but it’s a good case study for understanding what these tools are capable of. That said, here’s what makes it stand out,

1. It’s open source: You don’t have to pay extra money to gain one. This allows anyone to utilize this tool
2. LLM gateway: The WSO2 API manager handles integration of AI services into the applications smoothly and securely. It has in-built support for services such as Anthropic, AWS Bedrock, Azure AI Foundry, Azure OpenAI, Gemini, Mistral, and OpenAI. In addition it provides ability to set up custom AI providers as well. These AI API’s provide you the ability to interact with AI models, send requests and retrieve AI-generated responses
3. MCP gateway: enables the ability to transform API’s into AI-ready tools and govern their lifecycle. The problem it solves is that AI models on their own can’t actually interact with your systems; they can reason and respond, but they can’t pull live data or take real actions. The MCP Gateway bridges that gap by converting your existing APIs into tools that AI agents can discover, understand, and use on their own to complete tasks
4. Universal gateway: it’s like a security checkpoint and traffic controller that sits between the backend and the outside world. When an API call is made, it goes through some security checks and validation. The main thing you need to know about this is that it enforces security and handles control access.

What would be some real life use cases?

A good possible real life use case for this would be a large tech-based company which has API’s spread out across multiple cloud providers, so instead of logging into each one of them, you can manage it all in one place.

Another would be a food delivering service application. An app like that can juggle multiple API’s at once like one for location tracking, a payments API for processing orders, a restaurant API, and notifications API for order updates. An API manager like this will keep it all under control like including control access and enforcing limitations without things getting overwhelming

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Closing Thought

API’s are one of the vast fascinating aspects for why I love working in software. Without them, a lot of the applications would just not function and will be isolated from one another without any proper communication. API Managers is a crucial part of that picture, it’s what allows scalability, security, and communication to all work together effectively. WSO2 API Manager is just one example of how powerful and well-built these tools can be, and exploring it gave me a much deeper appreciation for the infrastructure that keeps modern software running. The specific tool a company chooses will vary, but the need for API management is universal.