What is API management?

Explore how to design, secure, and monitor your APIs in one place, making it easier to connect systems and scale integrations.

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API management is the process of designing, publishing, documenting and analyzing APIs in a secure environment. Through an API management solution, an organization can guarantee that both the public and internal APIs they create are consumable and secure.

API management solutions in the market can offer a variety of features; however, the majority of API management solutions allow users to perform the following tasks:

API design - API management solutions provide users – from developers to partners – the ability to design, publish and deploy APIs as well as record documentation, security policies, descriptions, usage limits, runtime capabilities and other relevant information.
API gateway - API management solutions also serve as an API gateway, which acts as a gatekeeper for all APIs by enforcing relevant API security policies and requests and also guarantees authorization and security.
API store - API management solutions provide users with the ability to keep their APIs in a store or catalog where they can expose them to internal and/or external stakeholders. This API “store” then serves as a marketplace for APIs, where users can subscribe to APIs, obtain support from users and the community and so on.
API analytics - API management allow users to monitor API usage, load, transaction logs, historical data and other metrics that better inform the status as well as the success of the APIs available.

The above features represent some of the ‘major’ offerings that API management solutions provide. The marketplace for API management was $70 million in 2013 and, according to Gartner ; this figure is expected to grow at 33.4% between 2017 and 2022, reaching an estimated 3,436.16 Million by 2022 according to Zion Market Research .

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Within the API management space, MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform has been recognized as a leader, appearing in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for API Management. So, what are the benefits of API management with Anypoint Platform?

Key Elements of Successful API Management

There are a few things to keep in mind when choosing an API platform for your business. Successful APIs are created with best practices that allow them to be successful, regardless of whether you’re starting out with new APIs or managing existing ones.

Design and Build

API-first design: Approaching API design with an “API-first” attitude allows organizations to focus on well-defined API specs rather than implementation concerns. By considering API design first, businesses can create an API optimized for adoption and then use a platform for implement services on the backend to bring it to life.

Solid API runtime: Once the API has been given life, it’s critical to pinpoint the ideal runtime. An API runtime should not only meet your existing needs, it should be future- proof, as a future-proof runtime allows your business to grow. Moreover, as businesses move towards the cloud, it’s important to find a solution that supports hybrid ecosystems, allowing organizations to deploy applications both on-premises and in the cloud according to needs. In addition, a solid API runtime should provide strong orchestration capabilities, as complex backend orchestration is crucial during translation. Finally, it’s important to find an API runtime that is scalable, reliable, and available, as these features are key to the long-term success of an API.

Deploy and Run

Promote and socialize APIs: Everyone loves a social API, making it all the more important for an API management solution to offer an easy way to drive engagement from developers and encourage consumption of APIs. Providing an easy way to consume APIs helps create a solid developer user base, ultimately helping your API be successful.

Monitor and assess API usage: Once the API is out in the world, it is important to follow up, manage and monitor its stats. Access to information about how consumers are engaging with the API can help businesses better understand their users and better understand how to create an API that fits their needs.

Govern and Manage

Central repository: Creating a central repository ensures that your API can be discovered and used by developers. A great central repository makes it easy to search services and view APIs as well as govern and manage them, helping improve APIs for future versions.

Manage services: Gain insight into how your API is being used and by whom. With information about who is interacting with your API and how they’re using it, businesses can assess the impact of the API. Furthermore, an API solution should offer an easy way to create policies and contracts and associate them with their corresponding APIs and consumers.

These key elements will help your business when deciding on an ideal API management platform. By following best practices, ensuring the success of your API becomes a much easier process.

What are the benefits of API management with Anypoint Platform?

Anypoint Platform enables organizations to design, build and manage their integrations and APIs so they can modernize legacy applications, move to the cloud, create new products, integrate with Salesforce and SAP, and much more.

Anypoint Platform includes an API management solution, Management Center, as well as the following capabilities:

Design Center - An interface that offers low-friction development tools that make it easy to design APIs, compose integration flows and build connectors
Anypoint Exchange - An API ‘store’ to save and share reusable assets such as APIs, connectors and templates publicly or privately within your organization.
Management Center - A single unified API management web interface that allows users to administer all aspects of Anypoint Platform on-premises and in the cloud. Manage API users, traffic, SLAs, underlying integration flows and more.
Mule runtime - The runtime engine of Anypoint Platform. It combines real-time application integration and orchestration with robust data integration capabilities. Mule runtime is deployable as an on-premises integration engine, hybrid iPaaS, or API Gateway.
Anypoint Connectors - These connectors provide quick connectivity to an endpoint or dynamic connectivity to API specifications.
Runtime Services - This suite helps deliver enterprise-grade security, scalability, reliability and high availability.

Within Management Center – Anypoint Platform’s API management solution – there are three unique capabilities that users can benefit from:

API Management - Anypoint Platform is listed as a leader in API Management, offering organizations the ability to have a unified platform that tracks each API and integration from end-to-end. In addition, the API reusability component of the platform leads to improved project speed. With Anypoint Platform’s API management solution and full suite of features, organizations can expect to deliver APIs and integrations 64% faster.
Single Management Pane for APIs and Hybrid Integrations - Anypoint Platform is a unified, single solution. This means that with Management Center, organizations receive a single API management pane for their APIs and hybrid integrations. This allows organizations to lower maintenance for APIs and integrations by an average of 63%.
Node Level Policy-based Security - With Anypoint Platform, every API, integration and asset is protected by increased governance and security at the node-level. Organizations that adopt Anypoint Platform and its API management solution can expect to witness a 94% improvement in integration security.

Beyond the above capabilities, Anypoint Platform’s API management solution – Management Center – also includes the follow features:

Built-in visibility
Producer and consumer analytics
Application network analytics
Utilization and progress KPIs
API Gateway policies

Anypoint Platform’s API management benefits include:

Faster onboarding of partners and developers
Self-service for partners and developers
Increased speed of delivery for external integrations with partners
Greater visibility and governance over partners and developers
Modern technologies attract new partnerships and developers

API management is becoming an increasingly important solution for every enterprise. Any organization that uses APIs or depends on them to deliver services should have a unified API management solution.

Learn more about how your organization can manage APIs from design to implementation. And see what Anypoint Platform can do for your organization.

Why use API management?

Faster Delivery: Organizations can deliver APIs and integrations up to 64% faster through reusability.
Improved Governance: Greater visibility and control over partners and developers.
Enhanced Security: Protects sensitive data from threats like DoS attacks through automated policy enforcement.

Seamless Onboarding: Provides self-service tools for faster partner and developer integration.

The Evolution of API Management in the Agentic Enterprise

As the digital landscape evolves toward the agentic enterprise, the role of API management is undergoing a fundamental shift. While APIs were historically designed for human developers to build applications, they are now increasingly consumed by AI agents.

An API is no longer just a technical endpoint: it is a capability that an agent must understand and execute.

Now, APIs are enriched with deep metadata and context. By providing this instruction manual for AI through robust api management, organizations ensure that agents can autonomously discover, interpret, and utilize business logic across a fragmented ecosystem of legacy and modern systems.

Extending API Governance to Autonomous Agents Agentic Guardrails

The autonomy of agents demands sophisticated agentic guardrails. These ensure that agents operate within strict business boundaries, maintaining security and data integrity without stifling the agent’s ability to solve complex problems in real time.

MuleSoft Agent Fabric, for example, extends your existing API management and governance to this new workforce. It allows you to set specific policies that dictate exactly what an agent can and can’t do. By using a central registry, you can track every action an agent takes, ensuring that its reasoning stays within your business guidelines. This framework ensures that your transition to AI is both fast and secure, keeping your data protected while your agents work toward your goals.

This transition to an agentic model transforms API management. Managing APIs effectively is now the prerequisite for successful AI deployment. By action-izing the enterprise, organizations can move beyond static integrations toward a dynamic environment where AI agents leverage a secure, governed, and highly visible network of APIs to drive unprecedented levels of productivity and autonomous workflow execution.

API Management vs. Agentic Management Features

Feature	Traditional API Management	Agentic Management (Agent Fabric)
Primary User	Human developers building apps.	Autonomous AI Agents performing tasks.
Interaction Style	Deterministic: A specific input always leads to a specific output.	Probabilistic: Agents reason through tasks and may call APIs in unpredictable sequences.
Discovery	Manual search in a portal or catalog.	Dynamic: Agents "read" metadata to discover tools on the fly via protocols like MCP.
Security Focus	Protecting endpoints from unauthorized human access.	Guardrails: Ensuring agents don't "hallucinate" actions or exceed their reasoning scope.
Governance	Policies like Rate Limiting and Client ID enforcement.	Agent Tracing: Auditing the intent and logic behind an agent's sequence of actions.
Success Metric	Uptime and Latency.	Task Completion Rate: Did the agent actually solve the user's problem?

API Management FAQs

API management helps organizations control how APIs are accessed, secured, and monitored across internal and external users. It reduces risk, improves reliability, and ensures APIs can scale without becoming difficult to manage.

API management enforces consistent security policies such as authentication, authorization, and traffic limits. It also provides centralized visibility and logging to support audits, compliance requirements, and threat detection. This helps organizations reduce risk while maintaining control as API usage scales.

API management addresses challenges like inconsistent access controls, limited visibility into usage, and operational complexity. It enables teams to reuse APIs safely while maintaining performance and governance at scale.

API management focuses on governing, securing, and monitoring APIs once they are exposed. API integration focuses on connecting systems and data sources using APIs to support business processes.

API management platforms control traffic through throttling, caching, and load management. This allows APIs to handle increased demand while maintaining consistent performance and availability. It also helps prevent system overloads and ensures critical services remain responsive during traffic spikes.

API management becomes critical when APIs are shared across teams, partners, or customers. It is especially important as API volume, security requirements, and operational complexity increase.

Modern API management provides a stable foundation for governing AI agent interactions with backend systems. It enforces strict policies to keep AI-driven actions predictable and secure. Centralized management enables organizations to scale AI-powered applications while maintaining full visibility into agent activity.