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Application Modernization
ADDRESSING YOUR API USE CASES: CHOOSING BETWEEN APIGEE, API GATEWAY, AND CLOUD
ENDPOINTS

November 18, 2022
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 

GEIR SJURSETH

Product Manager, Business Application Platform, Google Cloud

VIKAS ANAND

Director of Product, Business Application Platform, Google Cloud

TRY GOOGLE CLOUD

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products.

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API adoption is exploding everywhere — in fact over 80% of web traffic is now
API traffic (source). This is because APIs enable easier and more standardized
delivery of services and data — and this tends to lead to business growth. Many
organizations still regard APIs as implementation detail, but this massive
growth of APIs can be difficult to manage without a well-defined API strategy.

This is where API management comes in — making it easier to build APIs, secure
every API call, managing your API traffic and productizing critical data assets.
At Google Cloud we have three solutions for your API use cases: Apigee API
Management, API Gateway, and Cloud Endpoints, and each has a unique sweet spot.
So how do you choose which Google Cloud solution is appropriate for your use
case? Let’s start with some definitions:




APIGEE

Apigee is Google Cloud’s API management product that enables organizations to
build, manage, and secure APIs — for any use case, environment, or scale. Apigee
lets you operate in any environment of your choice (on-premises, in Google
Cloud, or a hybrid environment) with enhanced scale, security and automation.
Apigee includes advanced enterprise capabilities including security features
like bot and misconfigured API detection, tools to package and monetize digital
assets as APIs, flexible runtime support, developer portals, governance
policies, and more. Apigee offers two pricing models: Pay-as-you-go pricing to
manage your own costs without any upfront commitment, and multiple subscription
tiers to maintain predictable costs

When is it optimal?

While Apigee is designed for nearly any use case, it's especially valuable for
customers who have very high API volumes, a need for high reliability and
enterprise-grade security, or who rely on APIs exposed to third parties or
partners as part of their business. 

Many organizations manage a high and/or growing volume of APIs – often deployed
across multi-cloud environments and distributed architectures. This is
particularly common in large organizations relying on APIs to modernize their
legacy applications without slowing development. In these use cases, Apigee’s
flexible deployment options, consistent governance, and robust tools for
managing the full lifecycle of APIs are essential to managing the APIs
consistently at scale.

Maintaining high API uptime, performance and security in spite of unexpected
traffic spikes or growing malicious attacks is also essential for many
organizations. Often these are use cases where customer-facing applications rely
on APIs to orchestrate large amounts of business-critical or sensitive
transactions. Apigee’s comprehensive controls to monitor, secure, and analyze
API traffic enable organizations to maintain customer trust and consistent
performance.

Finally, many organizations leverage public APIs as a channel to create new
revenue streams or collaborate with external partners. Often these use cases
focus on maximizing the value of digital assets by packaging them into API
products and monetizing their adoption. In these use cases, Apigee’s multiple
developer portal offerings, API productization and monetization capabilities
streamline this process significantly.

Why do customers love it?

 * API products - Ability to productize APIs easily (e.g., developer portals)
   leads to new revenue streams and opportunities

 * Security & governance - Automated analytics, monitoring and governance help
   establish consistent standards without slowing down the pace of innovation

 * Battle tested - Apigee is Google Cloud’s primary API Management platform.
   Google (Apigee) was recognized as a Leader in the 2021 Gartner® Magic
   QuadrantTM for Full Life Cycle API Management six times in a row1 

 * Flexibility - Apigee can manage home grown or third-party APIs, REST or
   GraphQL, on premises, in Google Cloud or a hybrid deployment


API GATEWAY

API Gateway is a fully managed service that enables developers to create,
secure, and monitor APIs for services built on Google Cloud. Designed for
serverless workloads, API Gateway makes it easy to manage APIs for Cloud
Functions, Cloud Run, and App Engine. API Gateway includes security features
like authentication and key validation as well as monitoring, logging, and
tracing. With consumption-based pricing, it’s also easy to manage costs with API
Gateway.

When is it optimal?

API Gateway is optimal for cloud-native use cases where the target backends are
generally limited to services deployed on Google Cloud, and where the developer
audiences consuming the APIs don’t require a developer portal. Often these are
for very specific API use cases to package serverless applications: Cloud
Functions, Cloud Run, and App Engine. This is often especially useful for
digital-native organizations, small businesses, or for larger organizations that
are building new applications or testing a proof of concept. If you’re getting
started with API-first driven development and building serverless backends, then
using API Gateway is a great way to get started.

Why do customers love it?

 * Easy to take an OAS v2 spec and simply import it for generation

 * Seamless API gateways for serverless apps at Google Cloud

 * Very inexpensive to get started


CLOUD ENDPOINTS

Cloud Endpoints is a gateway that enables developers to to configure, deploy and
manage an ESPv2 proxy. Although Cloud Endpoints includes basic functionality
like user authentication, basic cloud logging and monitoring, and API keys to
validate API calls, it requires customers to manage every detail of the API
operations. You can manage Cloud Endpoints costs with consumption-based pricing.

When is it optimal?

Cloud Endpoints is most useful when you specifically want to host the gateway on
your own runtime with private networking, but would like the same kind of
control plane features (analytics and authentication enforcement) that you enjoy
with API Gateway.

The most common use case for Cloud Endpoints today is with gRPC services, where
a developer wants to locally host the gateway with their project. This can be
useful if you’d like to run and test the Cloud Endpoint on your own local
machine during development.


SO WHAT SHOULD YOU CHOOSE?

First of all, if you’re already using one of these products and it meets your
needs, keep doing what you’re doing. If not, try using the decision tree below
to consider key factors in the decision process.



For most customers running complex or high-scale applications, we suggest
considering Apigee first because it’s a full-featured product designed for API
consumption across teams, partners, organizations, and even ecosystems. You will
never outgrow Apigee because it’s both the most feature-rich and scalable, and
also the most cost-effective API management option at high scale. Apigee is
where we are investing most heavily in developing new features and functionality
— your API product dreams are most likely to come true with Apigee. 

However, if you’re working on a project that leverages serverless products like
Cloud Run and you’re not sure if you need to manage third-party APIs, optimize
for high scale or establish consistent governance yet, API Gateway is a good
choice because it’s a lightweight product designed for exposing APIs at the
project level. You can get started slowly and If your organization or project
scales up or expands to require new features, you can consider upgrading to
Apigee. 

Finally, if you’re running local tests, operating in your own private network,
require greater control over your gateway configurations and runtime operations
at the cost of operational complexity, then Cloud Endpoints may be a good choice
because it’s designed specifically for these use cases. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research
publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors
with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications
consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be
construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or
implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of
merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

1. GARTNER and Magic Quadrant are registered trademarks and service mark of
Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used
herein with permission. All rights reserved.

Posted in
 * Application Modernization
 * API Management
 * Hybrid & Multicloud
 * Infrastructure Modernization

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